Our project is rooted in West Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo in Indonesia. Open a map to find it, and one thing stands out: the equator runs right across this land. That line dividing the earth into upper and lower halves passes directly over the ground where our trees grow.
And this fact — being right on the equator — is a tremendous gift for people like us, who grow trees to make fuel. Today, we'd like to tell the story of why this place, of all places.
Trees that never stop growing
Picture a tree in a temperate land. Trees in Korea bud in spring, grow lush in summer, shed their leaves in autumn, and halt their growth in winter. They grow only about half the year, and sleep through the cold for the rest. This is also why trees form rings: growing seasons and resting seasons alternate, each carving one more ring.
Trees on the equator are different. In West Kalimantan the temperature holds near 27 degrees all year, and the day stays twelve hours long through every season. With no winter, a tree has no reason to sleep. Here, trees grow all year round, without rest. With no spring to wait for and no winter to endure, they add to themselves a little more each day.
It means the same tree grows far faster on this land. The fast-growing species we plant reach fuel-worthy thickness in just a few years thanks to this ceaseless growth. The equator gives a tree all twelve months of the year, whole and undivided.
A land where the sky waters for you
As vital as sunlight to a growing tree is water. Here, too, West Kalimantan is a blessed land. It has a tropical rainforest climate with generous rain all year, and even its driest month still brings substantial rainfall. There is, in effect, no dry season at all.
Why does this matter? Because without deliberately watering them, the sky waters the trees for us. To water a vast plantation by hand demands enormous labor and cost. But on this land, nature takes that task upon itself. Warm temperature and ample rain — the two things a growing tree needs — this place holds always, without any effort.
The road that leads to the sea
However good the land, if the road for shipping out the finished fuel is long, its value is halved. In the end, wood pellets must cross the sea to the power plants of Korea and Japan.
Here, too, West Kalimantan holds an advantage. Near our plantations and mill lies a port where large ships come and go, so the finished pellets can be loaded straight onto a ship without a long detour by land. The forest that grows the trees and the sea that carries them out lie close together. This is why, in an earlier story, we stressed "a near forest and a near sea." A short road cuts the labor and cost of transport, and with it, the carbon that leaks away before the fuel is ever burned.
Not chance, but choice
Our settling on this land was no accident. The warmth that lets trees grow without rest, the abundance in which the sky waters them, and the nearness that leads straight to the sea. For the work of growing trees into fuel, conditions better suited than these are hard to find.
The equator laid these gifts upon this land long ago. A warmth that never rests, a generous rain the sky pours in our stead, and a road that leads straight to the sea. For growing trees into fuel, a place better suited than this is hard to find. West Kalimantan is such a place.