BP has expanded its investment in bioenergy, committing $10mof funding to WasteFuel, a California-based biofuels company converting bio-based municipal and agricultural waste into lower carbon fuels, such as bio-methanol.

Globally, solid waste production totals about 2 billion metric tons annually and is expected to increase to 3.4 billion metric tons by 2050. WasteFuel’s deployment of anaerobic digestion and methanol production technologies will convert municipal and agricultural waste into viable lower emission alternatives to traditional fuels, like bio-methanol.

Bio-methanol has the potential to play a significant role in decarbonisation in sectors such as maritime transport, which produces around 3 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

“WasteFuel projects will look to help with the growing volumes of global waste, whilst advancing the development of lower carbon solutions for hard-to-abate sectors. Achieving decarbonisation in shipping will require a step-change, and biofuels have a key role to play in helping the industry to decarbonise. We look forward to working together on WasteFuel’s next stage of growth and market development,” said Gareth Burns, VP BP Ventures.

WasteFuel plans to develop multiple bio-methanol plants around the world, and expects its first project will be in Dubai. BP and WasteFuel have entered a memorandum of understanding for BP to offtake the produced bio-methanol and to work together to help optimize and improve bio-methanol production.

Bioenergy is one of bp’s five transition growth engines, in which the company plans to invest heavily through this decade. The transition growth engines – which also include convenience, electric vehicle charging, hydrogen and renewables & power.

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