The following is a transcript of an interview with SKY Renewables Founder and CEO Simon Yim, and ABC North Queensland’s Brooke Tindall.

Host 0:00
The tradition of burning tops and trash of sugar cane in the Burdekin could be on the way out, as one company proposes a renewable energy project for the region. Now, this project involves collecting the plant waste and turning it into biomethane, which is a renewable natural gas and highly sought after overseas, apparently. The CEO of SKY Renewables, Simon Yim, says the next steps are getting growers on board to change the way they harvest.

Simon Yim 0:35
I visited the Burdekin totally opportunistically, and I met a few grower representatives. They told me that they are burning the field to get rid of the tops and trash before harvesting because they cannot leave anything on the ground. At the same time, I was also aware that in Japan, they are looking for biomass pellets to substitute and in some cases co-fire with coal in coal fired power generators. So I thought that was the perfect match, because obviously, Queensland is extremely blessed with a lot of resources. So I thought, you know, one man’s rubbish is the other’s treasure. And the amazing thing was, nobody, nobody was actually doing it. So I sort of dug deeper and deeper, and finally come to realise that it is a really interesting market, and that was seven years ago. Today, I think we have found something even more interesting in terms of product. Instead of using the tops and trash to make the pellets, we are looking at using it to make biomethane. Biomethane is also known as renewable natural gas, RNG or bio LNG. It is a perfect drop in fuel for LNG fire power stations. Drop in means you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to tweak the machines. You can use from 1% to 100%. So in in a country like Singapore, Singapore, it got the highest GDP per capita in Asia. It has no land. It has no resources. And the interesting thing is, Singapore’s install base is 95% LNG, which means it has got a good problem and a bad problem. The good problem is it’s not as polluting as coal. The bad problems, the bad problem is LNG is extremely hard to decarbonise. There are only two ways to do it. One is to blend the LNG fuel with green hydrogen. The other one is with biomethane. The Singapore Government has ruled out green hydrogen because of all sorts of reasons, but mostly, most importantly, is being too expensive, and they are always looking out for biomethane. Bar methane is very hard to come by because the only, the only meaningful feedstock is agricultural waste. And in Asian markets, even going to 2030 there is no meaningful supply of biomethane. Australia is actually a well hidden secret in terms of what we have. So I was talking to the Singapore Government, and they say, you know, they’d be very interested in working with us.

Brooke Tindall 3:06
So this idea came about in 2018… what’s the holdup? Why does it, you know, what takes so long to get something like this up and running?

Simon Yim 3:16
That’s a lot, a lot of factors. I think, principally, we need to collect these tops and trash from 500-600 growers. So if you have to, kind of try to get everyone to supply the top and trash to you, and in due course, you know, agree not to burn and agree on a different way to harvest, then you need a lot of collaborators. You need each grower, because the supply contract is going to be signed with each grower, not the collectives. And we need the mills to somehow collaborate with us on the infill infrastructure to transport the whole of crop instead of the billets after burning. So we have to harvest in a entirely different way. It’s all doable. It’s just we have to go through a lot of feasibilities to prove the case.

Brooke Tindall 4:10
Now, what would the benefit be to growers?

Simon Yim 4:14
The benefits are obvious. So when you are when you are grower, you basically are subjecting yourself to the mercy of weather, and you are subjecting yourself to the operating situation of the mills, and you are, most of us, subjecting yourself to global price of sugar, which fluctuates a lot. So we are not, we are not trying to change any of those. But on top of what they can get from selling sugar, we are paying them an attractive price to collect the top and trash. So what we are offering now is we can conceptually subject to final contract offer them around one. Australian dollars, $15 per tonne of green trash that we are going to collect from the field at no extra cost to them. And so for it, for an average grower that grows, say, 10,000 tons of cane, all of which 20% is tops and trash, you’re talking about $30,000 extra revenue without any additional cost.

Host 5:23
That was CEO of SKY Renewables, Simon Yim speaking to Brooke Tindall.

1 May 2025