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AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE: The head of French energy giant Total announced Saturday that the company would invest 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, he said.
“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.
A study released on Thursday said that a massive campaign of reforestation could help battle climate change.
The study, carried out by ETH Zurich and published in Science, said a large-scale operation could capture two-thirds of man-made carbon emissions and reduce overall levels in the atmosphere to their lowest in almost a century.