Holden to support trash-fuel trial

Holden boss Mike Devereux has announced Holden will back a new company formed to commercialise the conversion of rubbish to ethanol.

The company, Flex Ethanol Australia, will be "supported" by GM and will undertake a detailed trial to convert "Melbourne-specification municipal waste" to ethanol, the Holden boss announced today.

Speaking at the American Chamber of Commerce in Melbourne today, Devereux stated the trial would take place at GM partner Coskata's gasification facility in Pittsburgh in the USA.

The formation of the company and the trial is the next step along a road to Australian production of ethanol from waste. It follows the March 2010 announcement of a consortium including Holden and the Victorian State Government to investigate the feasibility of building a fuel-from-rubbish plant locally.

Holden contends an Australian plant using the Coskata process could turn "over a million tonnes of waste into 200 million litres of ethanol a year".

Devereux joked that the US-based trial might need to source "Vegemite jars" but was serious about the importance of the trial. The process he says even has the ability to use waste tyres to feed the ethanol production process.

"I am not sure how they get the Vegemite jars though [to Pittsburgh], but the municipal waste and old tyres shouldn't be too hard to source... The ability to recycle tyres in the process is actually one of the key benefits of the second generation ethanol production process. The plant here could potentially process hundreds of thousands of tyres a year which are currently a huge contributor to Australian landfill," he stated.

"Ultimately, what I want people to take away from this is that we're not driving change for ethanol, rather ethanol is the means to achieve environmental and social benefits... We can achieve this through better waste management, more sustainable driving and greater energy independence for Australia, Devereux opined.

"We've seen energy and environmental projects fail in the past due to their one dimensional nature... We believe the Coskata business model is the right one to use in Australia because it doesn't rely on a single feedstock or commercial driver," he stated.

Holden offers flex-fuel ethanol/petrol capability on its latest 3.0-litre V6 and V8 Commodore models. It also exports ethanol-ready Commodores to Brazil under the Chevrolet Omega nameplate.

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