An environmental organisation from Bargara, near Bundaberg, is aiming to produce biofuels for the Japanese aviation industry by establishing Australia's first commercial pongamia plantation.
The Burnett-Mary Regional Group will use pongamia seed oil to create sustainable aviation fuel in partnership with Japanese petroleum company Idemitsu and oil company J-Oil Mills.
Pongamia, a legume tree native to south Asia which has been naturalised in north Australia, produces a seed that can be used to produce biofuels, fertiliser and feed for livestock.
The not-for-profit Burnett-Mary Regional Group said it had already secured land south of Miriam Vale, 200 kilometres south of Rockhampton, for the first phase of the project.
Chief executive Sheila Charlesworth said it was a "monumental step" for the organisation and the environment.
"This is actually to help our region, to help the environment and we are working very closely with the Queensland government in what is an Australian first," she said.
"It's all about climate adaptation, reducing carbon, and increasing the productivity of land that hasn't been as productive to increase the microbes in the soil."
Ms Charlesworth expected the first crop to be harvested by 2029.
"There's a lot of infrastructure, a lot of training, building the nurseries to be done," she said.
"This is why we're working with international companies and leveraging research that has been done in India.
"Some has been done in Sri Lanka and other areas of Australia."
She said feedstock would be a by-product of the plantation, which would also create jobs.
"There'll be at least 20 direct local jobs in that region, the Miriam Vale plantation," she said.
"But we will also be using associated businesses, agronomists, excavation work and a number of other companies.
"We'll certainly work with [the University of Queensland] as well, but there are at least 14 universities keen to work with us.
"The Japanese government has also allocated the head of the universities over there to work with us on this joint venture."
What is pongamia?
Emeritus Professor Peter Gresshoff has studied pongamia plants at the University of Queensland for the past 15 years.
He said the seeds were 40 per cent oil.
"You get that oil out by literally crushing the seed," Professor Gresshoff said.
"The yield per hectare, conservatively speaking, is three tonnes of oil per year.
"What is good about that energy source is that it is sustainable, in other words, next year the tree will do that again."
He said the legume plant was also very resilient.
"It doesn't mind growing by the side of the road where it doesn't get watered and doesn't get fertilised," Professor Gresshoff said.
"They've been planted in different environments and pongamia is doing well in all of them."
He said he was pleased the commercial sector was tapping into the sustainable energy source.
"What we see now is the utilisation of what nature has given us," Professor Gresshoff said.
"It is exciting now to have [the involvement of] industry, investors, regional councils that have land, Indigenous people who are involved in maintaining plantations, universities.
"What is very pleasing for me, as an academic, is to see that the commercial entities, the investors which normally only think about money and development, now are embracing research."
Professor Gresshoff said the aviation industry was trialling biofuel.
"Commercial aircraft have been using, experimentally, biofuel, which has come from plants like pongamia," he said.
"[The planes need] thousands and thousands of litres, and therefore you need large plantations.
"That has not been possible in Australia up until now."
