What we're doing right
The fuel efficient forest
12th April 2008
"Diesel trees" are no solution to our global energy needs, but could be enough to make a single farm self sufficient if grown wisely
Money may grow on trees after all. Farmers in North Queensland, Australia, are planting at least 20,000 “diesel trees” (Copaifera langsdorfii), native to Brazil. These can be tapped – like maple or rubber trees – to harvest up to 40 litres a year of a natural diesel, needing only simple filtration before it’s ready to use in a tractor or truck.
Biofuels made from food crops such as corn, soy and palm oil are increasingly getting a bad name for depleting our food stores and requiring large amounts of energy and land to be produced. So biofuels made from other sources, such as grasses, trees and algae, look appealing. Is Copaifera a perfect solution? Not really: The trees will take at least 15 years to mature; they can’t be grown outside the tropics; and they require large volumes of water (scarce in the rest of Australia).
“Diesel trees” could never satisfy our global energy needs. But in North Queensland, farmers hope that one hectare will produce 12,000 litres of diesel a year – theoretically enough to make a small farm self-sufficient.
Published in The Green Report in The Globe and Mail
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