Project Background

The extreme utilization of fossil fuels and the corresponding environmental effects inclusive of global warming and environmental-friendly pollution have become a global problem and urged people to aggressively search for cheap, environmentally friendly, and renewable energy. In the ASEAN alone, energy-related carbon emissions are predicted to rise two times in 2035. This increase is commensurate with the increase in the regional energy demand due to improved public welfare, low retail oil prices (due to subsidies), and inadequate mass transport. To improve the situation, a strategic policy can be directed at the transportation sector, which increasingly consumes a large amount of energy every year, and is dominated by fossil fuel. One of the important transport modes that have a specific challenge for decarbonization is airplanes. Not only it is not applicable to electric vehicle strategies like for road transport, but the aviation industry is projected to have a significantly larger market in ASEAN in the near future. Therefore, a progressive development towards a clean energy solution of biomass for the aviation industry that is later known as bio-jet fuel is becoming more urgent to be realized.

Aims and Objectives

Elisabeth Rianawati (RDI director) together with a multidisciplinary team of scientists and researchers from Malaysia and Japan managed to secure a grant to conduct collaborative research that focuses on the usage of different biomass in specific ASEAN countries (Malaysia and Indonesia) as feedstock in the production of renewable energy in the form of high quality of bio-oil for the aviation industry. The main aim of this research is to utilize palm oil wastes in the ASEAN region as a feedstock for the upgrading of biofuel to renewable jet fuel.