Plants may produce a third of petrol by 2025

A researcher from the Southern Cross University says up to a third of the nation’s petrol could come from plants by the year 2025. Professor Robert Henry says biofuel has the potential to become a five-billion dollar industry in Australia. Henry says plants, such as sugar cane and eucalyptus trees, can be used to produce fuel. He says more than a hundred conversion facilities would have to be built in rural and regional areas, spreading the wealth and creating jobs. “This could see very substantial growth in a number of rural industries and so the benefits will be in more than one area and across a number of different sectors we would expect within rural communities,” Henry said. “We would be replacing imported oil and that would have benefits for our balance in the economy, but we’d also see the creation of large numbers of jobs in regional areas associated with the production of these crops and their processing into fuel,” he said. (August 11, 2009)