Weyerhaeuser has teamed up with one of the world’s largest oil companies to attempt to convert trees and plants into hydrocarbons.
Catchlight Energy, a joint venture between Weyehaeuser and Chevron Corporation, aims to turn biomass grown on Weyerhaeuser’s tree farms into a green hydrocarbon oil.
“It would be no different from gasoline dervied from fossil fuels, except it would be made directly from plant life,” said Catchlight Energy president Michael Burnside.
To grow sufficient biomass, the company will move away from monoculture to growing several crops on the same site. Weyerhaeuser intends to grow a native American prairie grass between its trees, roughly doubling the biomass grown per hectare.
