Sugar could be part of the answer to the current energy crisis, but fluctuating prices and an uncertain market means it could pose too big a risk in an expansion.
Just one single mill operated by Australia's second largest sugar milling company, Mackay Sugar, has the capacity to power about 30 per cent of the regional city of Mackay.
But just 12 months ago, negative prices would have eroded profit.
"Obviously there is a good return right now," Mackay Sugar chief executive Jannik Olejas said.
How does sugar become electricity?
The process of turning sugar into power is straightforward according to David Rynne, the director of economics, policy, and trade for the Australian Sugar Milling Council.
It is generated by the sugar mills during the process of turning sugarcane into the sweet white stuff, thanks to a by-product called bagasse.
"The bagasse is that fibrous material left over after the sugarcane has been crushed to remove the juice," Mr Rynne said.
"The boilers receive the bagasse, they heat the bagasse up to about 800 degrees Celsius to produce steam.
"The steam drives the turbines, and that generates the electricity.
"That power goes back into the factories, and surplus power is sold into the National Electricity Market (NEM)."
So if it is so easy, why are we not seeing more homes being powered by it?
For the mills, it turns out the renewable energy space is not always such a sweet deal thanks to a volatile market.
Volatility barring expansion?
Mackay Sugar has invested significantly in the renewable energy space and said there was still room for further growth.
Of their work to date, the co-generation plant at their Racecourse sugar mill is their biggest asset in generating renewable energy.
"We do have ambition to go even higher than that."
But Mr Olejas said sugar mills needed more stability before they were able to increase the volume of energy they exported into the grid.
"I think, with many of these things, what really is the right answer to this is about predictability," he said.
Mr Rynne said from the perspective of a mill it was a matter of risk assessment.
"The mills are assessing what are the commercial risks? What are the technological risks?" he said.
Mr Rynne said they were looking at ways to get more from the process than just raw sugar sales.
He said bagasse was a valuable commodity and there were options for where it could go outside of just producing renewable energy.
"It can be used in a range of ways, it could be used as an input to make sustainable aviation fuel," Mr Rynne said.
"It can be used is as a feedstock for … synthetic biology, where you're mixing a sugar by-product with algae or an enzyme.
"And you're using synthetic biology [to enable] technology to make synthetic foods or synthetic fibre."
What does the industry need?
Mr Rynne said ultimately the sugar industry needed to make informed decisions about where to invest, and whether that was in renewable energy.
"The most important thing that a government can offer is stable policy settings … so we know the rules, we can make an informed investment decision, and do our due diligence," he said.
"[Then we can] go right through to hopefully the final investment decision and make those investments, whether that could be in a biorefinery or a new co-gen plant."
In the past, he said the industry was better incentivised to increase its renewable outputs.
"We've got a handful of mills that have got very large co-gen facilities and they've done that deliberately to generate excess power and to sell that into the grid," he said.
"And indeed, the Australian sugar industry brought on another 200-250MW of capacity on the strength of the incentives offered under the renewable energy target."
He said a similar approach could potentially help the industry going forward.
"What other incentives we may need going forward is something that we need to think about and run the ruler over, the different options," he said.
"It could be that we do need some incentives to get projects over the commercial line."
