[Peakoil] Plane biofuel to be made from eucalypt

[W & C Steensby]

Usual caveats:
1. will it lead to widespread clearing of non-mallee in favour of mallee monocultures?
2. will all existing mallee be destroyed, oops, harvested, before plantations have time to grow? 
3. what happens to the biodiversity in current mallee areas?
4. might mallee find itself genetically modified?

Here's an interesting paper on the use of mallee for oil:
Oil mallee must look to multi-product industries
http://dpannell.fnas.uwa.edu.au/dpap0104.htm

Two excerpts:
"A large scale industry relying solely on eucalyptus oil for income is not likely to produce oil at a low enough price to enable entry into the industrial solvent markets. Even in the case of setting multiple parameters to optimistic levels, hypothetical oil extraction industries appeared unlikely to compete with the IRR of an integrated mallee processing plant (Figure 1)."
However:
"Integrated mallee processing plants, jointly producing three products, eucalyptus oil, electricity and activated carbon, can produce oil at a low enough cost to enable an aggressive market development position to be taken."

On 2011/09/02, at 08:26, Jenny Goldie wrote:

> 
> Plane biofuel to be made from eucalypt
> Australia's gums could hold the key to an environmentally friendly aviation sector.
> http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/plane-biofuel-to-be-made-from-eucalypt-20110901-1jnv4.html