The raise, via the Climate Tech Partners aviation sidecar fund, backed by the airline and plane manufacturer, was topped up by $3.15m in grant funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
The Brisbane startup founded in 2016 and bootstrapped until 2022, has developed patented modular technology, dubbed Moving Injection Horizontal Gasification (MIHG), which converts unprocessed waste, including household rubbish, into synthesis gas (syngas), used to generate power, heat, and low-carbon fuels, including methanol and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
The raise will be used to upgrade an eight-year-old pilot plant near Brisbane to commercial scale.
The $3.15m from ARENA’s SAF funding initiative is to pilot the integration of Wildfire’s MIHG technology with methanol synthesis to produce methanol and undertake a feasibility study to assess a Queensland facility that would convert waste into SAF.
The company hopes it will result in deployments throughout regional Australia, believing it’s a solution for councils across Australia to avoid landfill space constraints and emissions.
Wildfire also hope to expand globally through a capital-lite licensing model.
Wildfire Energy cofounder and CEO Greg Perkins said recent global events highlighted the vulnerability of relying on fuel imports.
“Wildfire’s technology converts abundant negative value wastes into low cost sustainable fuels and chemicals, enabling local production to meet local demand,” he said.
“For the aviation sector our solution delivers a sovereign fuel supply and helps airlines meet mandates for sustainable aviation fuel which are coming into effect now. We have the technological solution, the efficient cost curve. Now we need to scale.”
Stephen Forshaw from Airbus in Australia said scaling SAF production requires optimising the cost and managing “feedstock” – the waste converted into energy.
“For Australia, where foodstuffs and ‘red bins’ are as disparate as our population, the fact that Wildfire’s solution can be deployed locally and at scale holds significant advantages,” he said.
“Local SAF production needs to be brought online to reduce our reliance on imported fuels, which is why Airbus is backing innovations that will make its local production more efficient.”
ARENA also funded the refurbishment of a storage tank for SAF to supply Brisbane Airport.
“This project shows how we can start supplying SAF through existing fuel systems, while building the foundations for a domestic industry in Australia,” ARENA CEO Darren Miller said.
