Buchanan Renewables Power (BRP) began commercial operations in Liberia two years ago with a complete rejuvenation package for the non-producing rubber tree estates. The deal for the farmers includes $2 per tonne of tree trunks, free of cost re-plantation and for self-use or sale tree remnants which do not go into the production of wood chips.

Liberia is estimated to have more than 600,000ha of overgrown and moribund rubber farms. The new model of rubber re-plantation rids of farmers’ laborious task of re-claiming their estates by cutting down trees and re-planting them spending money without revenues for a long period. After planting, the trees take nearly seven years to start producing rubber.

Usually rubber trees need to be replaced once they are over 25 years old, and most of them in Liberia are between 30 and 60 years old. While helping farmers, the new project will also provide electricity to communities in the vicinity as well as has opened up exports to the woodchip markets of Europe.

BRP uses massive diggers to uproot trees and a giant mincer to produce rubber wood chips out of the trunks. The company has exported 45,000MT of chips last year with contracts of about 90,000MT for this year; and plans to clear 10,000ha annually.

The Buchanan claims that it has the capacity to produce 400,000 tonnes of woodchips per annum. Besides, on many farms, it has been able to plant two trees for every one that has been harvested.

For Liberia it means that many of its citizens will be re-injected to the market with jobs and businesses, a dire need of the country that promises opportunities and improved living standards after the end of seven years of civil war. BRP says its vision is to achieve success in Liberia and repeat this model in other countries in Africa and, to the extent possible, worldwide.

The firm which emphasizes on cheap, environment-friendly and sustainable energy production with a social commitment to Liberia is putting back some of its revenues for power generation using the locally sourced wood chips. However, the proposed 35MW power generation plant at Monrovia which is supposed to provide electricity for half the price has not been installed yet even two years after its approval.

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Monoculture trees or commercially sourced trees are widely blamed for drying up hydrological basins and polluting air and soil by using pesticides and other agrochemicals. Furthermore, natural forests are sacrificed to encourage industrialized tree plantation with adverse impact on the biodiversity.

Several studies have shown natural forests contained far more species than monoculture tree plantations. Since 1980 tropical forest plantations have expanded by almost fivefold.

Simone Lovera, of the non-governmental Global Forest Coalition told Tierramérica that Europe was going to cook the world’s tropical forests to fight climate change. She was referring to the number of mega biomass plants coming up across Europe. Tierramérica is a communications platform for Sustainable Human Development and Environment in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In the last two months in the UK alone, energy companies have announced the construction of at least six new biomass power generation plants to produce 1,200 megawatts of energy, primarily from burning woodchips. A single power plant requires millions of tons of biomass, and the new plants are expected to burn 20 to 30mn tons of wood annually, nearly all imported from other regions and equivalent to at least one million hectares of forest.

The advocates of natural forests questioned the logic of carbon emissions by transporting the wood from far off places and then burning them to produce energy with another carbon emitting process of biomass plants. Experts claim reforestation of fast growing trees through pesticides and other agrochemicals will cause irreversible damage to the soil thereby to expedite the desertification process of once lush green natural forest cover.

Interestingly, burning wood for energy is regarded as carbon neutral by the US, and this has fuelled proposals for some 102 biomass or bio-fuel energy facilities in the region. However, a study by the Massachusetts Environmental Energy Alliance, a US environmental group, indicates that burning trees for energy produces 1.5 times as much carbon as coal and three to four times more than natural gas.

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