Wildfire Energy's Gasifier Turns a Landfill into a Fuel Depot

The world has two problems that, in a perfect system, would cancel each other out. One is a glut of non-recyclable waste piling up in landfills. The other is a stubborn shortage of clean, drop-in fuels for industries like aviation and shipping. Greg Perkins, a chemical engineer who once commissioned a $100 million gasification unit in Malaysia, looked at this imbalance and saw an equation waiting to be solved. His Brisbane-based startup, Wildfire Energy, is now building the hardware to balance it: a reactor designed to chew up municipal trash and woody biomass and spit out syngas, a precursor for hydrogen, methanol, and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) [Amazon Music, November 2024].

It’s a classic climate tech play, turning a liability into an asset. But the unit economics of waste-to-fuel have historically been a graveyard for good intentions. The trick isn’t just proving the chemistry in a lab; it’s building a reactor that can handle inconsistent, dirty feedstock at a scale that pencils out. Wildfire’s bet is on its proprietary Mechanical Indirect Heat Gasification (MIHG) technology, a process it has been refining since 2016. The company is now moving out of the pilot phase, propelled by a mix of strategic airline investment and substantial government grants, toward its first commercial plant [Wildfire Energy].

The reactor at the rubbish dump

Gasification is an old idea. Heat organic material in a controlled, oxygen-starved environment, and it breaks down into a synthetic gas, or syngas, rich in hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The challenge is doing it efficiently with the mixed, soggy, and unpredictable stream of what cities throw away. Wildfire’s MIHG system is engineered for this messiness. It uses a mechanical system to continuously feed and move material through the reactor, aiming for stable syngas production from a variable diet of waste and biomass [Hamilton Locke].

The output is a building block, not a finished product. That syngas can be cleaned and processed into a range of energy carriers. The company’s published targets include renewable hydrogen, methanol, ammonia, and synthetic diesel and jet fuel, particularly for projects larger than 50,000 tonnes per year [Wildfire Energy, MIHG Technology]. This flexibility is a strategic hedge. It allows Wildfire to pivot its end product based on local demand and subsidy landscapes, whether that’s hydrogen for heavy industry or SAF for the airlines now on its cap table.

A coalition of the willing (to fund)

Wildfire’s traction is less about traditional venture rounds and more about assembling a coalition of strategic and governmental backers who have a direct interest in the outcome. The funding stack is a telling mix of corporate strategic capital and non-dilutive grants.

Nov 2025 Strategic Investment | 2 | M AUD
Jul 2026 Queensland Government Grant | 18.56 | M AUD
Sep 2026 Australian Government Grant | 3.15 | M AUD

In late 2025, Climate Tech Partners led a A$2 million investment with participation from Qantas and Airbus through an “Aviation Sidecar” [Wildfire Energy, November 2025]. For the airlines, it’s a long-term option on a potential SAF feedstock. Then, in mid-2026, the Queensland Government awarded the company a A$18.56 million grant to support the first phase of the Bulwer Island Biofuels Hub, the intended site for its first commercial-scale plant [Wildfire Energy, July 2026]. A further A$3.15 million from an Australian Sustainable Aviation Fuel funding initiative followed for a bio-methanol demonstration project with partner Mitsui Kinzoku [Wildfire Energy, September 2026].

This model de-risks the capital-intensive leap from pilot to commercial plant. The government grants fund the infrastructure, while the airline investors signal a future customer base. The team, which includes co-founders Denis Doucet and Grant Bollaert alongside Perkins, brings decades of combined experience in process engineering, oil and gas, and petrochemicals,a background geared for building big, complex things that work [Wildfire Energy, Team].

The partnership path to scale

Alone, a startup can’t reshape the waste and fuel industries. Wildfire’s path to market runs through partnerships with entities that control feedstock, own distribution, or have massive decarbonization mandates. Two recent deals outline this strategy.

• Mitsui Kinzoku Company. A collaboration to advance a demonstration project producing bio-methanol from biomass and waste, with an eye on SAF production. The Australian government grant is specifically tied to this effort [Biofuels Digest, 2026].
• Naturgy. The Spanish energy giant signed an agreement to validate the industrial scalability of the MIHG technology and analyze its potential implementation in Spain and Europe, leveraging its expertise in renewable gases [Naturgy, 2026].

These are not mere press release partnerships. They are essential technical and commercial validation steps. Mitsui brings industrial chemistry expertise, while Naturgy offers a potential bridge into the European market, where waste-to-energy regulations and carbon prices are more advanced.

The incumbent in the rearview

The most obvious counterfactual for Wildfire isn’t another startup; it’s the landfill. Today, non-recyclable waste is either buried, releasing methane over decades, or incinerated, often with limited energy recovery. For a municipality, the landfill is a known, if environmentally problematic, cost. For Wildfire to win, its technology must offer a better financial proposition: a tipping fee for waste that competes with landfill costs, plus revenue from the sale of syngas or fuels that makes the whole project economically sustainable without perpetual subsidies.

The company claims its process can achieve negative lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions when using putrescible waste, as it avoids methane emissions from landfills and displaces fossil fuels [Wildfire Energy, Hydrogen]. That’s a powerful climate case. But the business case must close on its own. The Bulwer Island hub is the first real-world test of those economics at commercial scale. Delays, technical hiccups, or higher-than-expected operating costs could slow adoption, especially in regions without a high carbon price or strict landfill diversion laws.

The next twelve months

All eyes are on Bulwer Island. The next year is about turning that A$18.56 million grant into steel in the ground and proving the MIHG system can operate reliably at its designed capacity. Success there would transform Wildfire from a promising pilot operator into a credible technology provider. It would also likely trigger the next phase of funding, whether from further government programs, expansion capital from its existing strategic backers, or a larger venture round to replicate the model elsewhere.

The company’s partnership with Naturgy suggests Europe as a logical next market, given its advanced regulatory push for circular economies and alternative fuels. A proven plant in Australia becomes the reference site for sales pitches in Madrid or Berlin.

So, what does the math look like? Take a modest commercial plant processing 50,000 tonnes of waste per year. If it achieves a conservative syngas yield, that stream could be converted into roughly 1,500 tonnes of renewable hydrogen (estimated). That’s enough to fuel a small fleet of buses or offset a slice of industrial natural gas use. The real prize, however, is in the liquid fuels. The same waste stream could yield over 5 million liters of methanol, a versatile chemical and fuel precursor. The unit economics hinge entirely on the spread between the cost of waste disposal and the market price of those end products. For now, the Queensland government’s grant is the bridge across that uncertainty.

Wildfire Energy’s ultimate competition isn’t another gasifier startup. It’s the inertia of the existing waste management system and the fossil fuel industry it aims to displace. To win, it must prove that its rubbish-powered reactor is not just cleaner, but fundamentally cheaper than the status quo.

Sources

1. [Amazon Music, November 2024] Exploring Clean Energy Ep 26 - The ‘Rubbish’ Episode: Converting Waste to Energy - with Wildfire Energy | https://music.amazon.com/es-us/podcasts/f81c196c-fcf2-4354-a49c-8903f94ab6c6/episodes/a783e8c3-9b2e-459d-9696-b0281aac59f0/exploring-clean-energy-ep-26-%E2%80%93-the-%E2%80%98rubbish%E2%80%99-episode-converting-waste-to-energy-%E2%80%93-with-wildfire-energy
2. [Wildfire Energy] Company Website and Technology Pages | https://www.wildfireenergy.com.au/
3. [Hamilton Locke] Article on MIHG Technology | Source URL not captured in snippets
4. [Wildfire Energy, November 2025] News: Climate Tech Partners, Qantas and Airbus Investment | https://www.wildfireenergy.com.au/news
5. [Wildfire Energy, July 2026] News: Queensland Government Grant for Bulwer Island | https://www.wildfireenergy.com.au/news
6. [Wildfire Energy, September 2026] News: SAF Funding for Mitsui Kinzoku Project | https://www.wildfireenergy.com.au/news
7. [Biofuels Digest, 2026] Article on Mitsui Kinzoku Collaboration | Retrieved 2026
8. [Naturgy, 2026] Press Release on MIHG Validation Agreement | Retrieved 2026
9. [Wildfire Energy, Team] Team Page | https://www.wildfireenergy.com.au/