By Nick Toscano
Rio Tinto and Woodside Energy have signed up to underpin the launch of a $60 million Australian research hub, where scientists will work with big polluters on novel ways to cut down their emissions and convert their waste into lower-carbon fuels and materials.
As governments and climate-minded shareholders ratchet up pressure on major emitters to tackle global warming, the ASX-listed mining and gas giants have emerged as two key partners of the new bio-sustainability hub at the University of Queensland, the first of its kind in Australia.
Major emitters are backing a push to use a carbon-eating bacteria to convert greenhouse gas into feedstock to make cleaner fuels for the aviation industry.Credit: Nic Walker
The hub will focus on “synthetic biology” processes, including the use of a carbon-eating bacteria to convert energy giant Woodside’s waste carbon emissions into higher-value products, such as a feedstock for ethanol that could ultimately be used to make sustainable aviation fuel.
If successful, proponents say the technology could restrict the amount of harmful emissions released from gas-production activities, and reduce the proportion of jet fuel made using crude oil.
Research at the hub will also be conducted for the global mining industry, including developing biological methods through which microbes could be used to enhance the recovery of critical minerals from Rio Tinto’s mine waste, particularly metals needed as raw materials for green energy infrastructure.
Using biological solutions to help heavy greenhouse gas emitters shift their production practices could be game-changing in the fight to arrest the climate crisis, said Professor Esteban Marcellin, from the University of Queensland’s Australian Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.
University of Queensland synthetic biology expert Professor Esteban Marcellin.
“To address climate change, we need to help big business find alternative solutions that are better for the environment,” he said.
US-based LanzaTech, a biotechnology company focused on recycling carbon for use in sustainable aviation fuel and consumer products, has also signed on as a partner. The hub is also receiving funding from the federal government and the University of Queensland.
Woodside and Rio Tinto are among the country’s biggest industrial emitters due to the vast carbon footprints of Woodside’s gas production assets in Victoria and Western Australia, and Rio Tinto’s Queensland alumina refineries and aluminium smelters.
Both companies have been forced to adhere to deeper emission-reduction targets from this year under the Albanese government’s toughening of the “safeguard mechanism” climate policy, while also facing sustained pressure from shareholders to slash emissions and expand into cleaner products.
Earlier this year, Woodside, the largest Australian gas company, was rocked by a historic investor uprising over its approach to climate change, when 58 per cent of its shareholders rejected its decarbonisation strategies as inadequate.
Several large investors in Australia, Europe and Britain publicly condemned Woodside’s climate targets as too weak, and said they had become increasingly concerned about the risks involved in the company’s plans to develop new fossil fuel production projects at a time of accelerating international efforts to restrain rising global temperatures.
The Perth-based oil and gas giant has set a target to greenlight investments in lower-carbon products or carbon capture technologies that could abate five million tonnes of emissions a year by 2030. The move was welcomed by some investors as a positive step, but there are concerns that projects may be difficult to commercialise at the scale required.
Woodside vice president of energy solutions Jason Crusan said biological solutions could contribute to the company’s efforts to decarbonise.
“We have set very clear emissions reduction targets, and we believe that biological solutions could be an important part of the solutions to help us achieve our emissions reductions,” he said.
Nick Gurieff, Rio Tinto’s principal adviser on mine closure research and development, said finding better ways to recover critical minerals and remediate the byproducts from mining and processing activities was a key objective for the business.
“Our partnership with the University of Queensland in developing biological solutions to support these objectives is an important part of our investment in the future of mine closure,” he said.
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