- Global energy company Total will be investing a hundred million dollars annually on a new forest preservation and reforestation project.
“We want to set up a business unit to invest in projects that will preserve forests,” chief executive Patrick Pouyanne told a meeting to discuss economic issues in Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France.
The company would spend $100 million a year on the project. “The most effective way today to eliminate carbon, for less than $10 a tonne, is reforestation,” he added.
“This is not philanthropy,” he added. “It’s about investing in the medium- and long-term. A project for the forests, it has to last a long time to be positive for the planet.”
Pouyanne was speaking just days after Total said it had begun producing biofuel at a refinery in southern France, a project that has sparked an outcry from environmentalists and farmers over its plans to import palm oil. The site at La Mede near Marseille is a former oil refinery which has been converted and is now one of the largest biorefineries in Europe.
Teenaged activist Greta Thunberg responded in tweet “Yes, of course we need to plant as many trees as possible. But there’s absolutely no way around stopping our emissions of greenhouse gases and leaving the fossil fuels in the ground.”
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
