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PRESS RELEASE - 26th November 2002 Eucalypts Grown To Offset Greenhouse Gasses Could Provide Feedstock For New Green Industries In Regional Australia. In a paper to International workshop organised by the CSIRO, Professor Syd Shea, the Chairman and Managing Director of the Oil Mallee Company, said that the market for carbon sinks could provide the funds to finance planting mallee eucalypts on the scale necessary to have a significant impact on salinity. "2 million hectares of mallees planted in alleys on farmland would absorb between 50 and 80 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum" Professor Shea said. "The Oil Mallee Company of Australia has recently been contracted by the Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. of Japan to plant and manage 1000 hectares of mallees on Western Australian farms for the purpose of offsetting greenhouse gasses produced in Japan - even though Australia had not ratified the Kyoto Protocol." Professor Shea said that "Australia would be one of the most attractive places in the world to plant trees to offset greenhouse gas emissions if Australia ratified the Protocol." "Planting on the scale proposed in Western Australia would result in the production of 40 million tonnes of green biomass per annum which would provide feedstock for new green industries such as renewable energy, activated carbon, industrial solvents and activated charcoal." He said "apart from the fact that farmers could make a profit from planting trees to alleviate salinity, harvested mallees would retain their carbon credits if the biomass was used to displace fossil fuels or was converted to products with a long carbon life. Most of the industries being considered were 'job rich' and would make a major contribution to rejuvenating regional Australia." "One of the major reasons why new tree based industries were not being created in regional Australia was the reluctance of investors to put funds into tree planting until they were assured that there were processing centres and markets for wood fibre. But nobody would invest in processing plants until they were assured of a raw material resource. The new tree product - sequestered carbon - however, does not require a processing centre and it does not have to be transported. The demand for carbon would provide a circuit breaker and drive the development of major new green industries in the bush" Professor Shea said. Contact: Professor Syd Shea - 0403 309 003 |