BIOFUELS such as biodiesel from soybeans can create up to four times more climate-warming emissions than standard diesel or petrol, according to an EU document released under freedom of information laws.
The European Union has set itself a goal of obtaining 10% of its road fuels from renewable sources, mostly biofuels, by the end of this decade, but it is now worrying about the unintended environmental impacts.
Chief among those fears is that biofuel production soaks up grain from global commodity markets, forcing up food prices and encouraging farmers to clear tropical forests in the quest for new land. Burning forests releases vast quantities of carbon dioxide and often cancels out many of the climate benefits sought from biofuels.
Biodiesel from North American soybeans has an indirect carbon footprint of 339.9kg of carbon dioxide (CO2) per gigajoule – four times higher than standard diesel – said the EU document, an annex that was controversially stripped from a report published in December. But it has now been made public after Reuters used freedom of information laws to gain a copy. The EU’s executive European Commission said it had not doctored the report to hide the evidence, but only to allow deeper analysis before publishing.
“Given the divergence of views and the level of complexity of the issue ... it was considered better to leave the contentious analysis out of the report,” the Commission said in a statement. “The analysis prepared under this study applied a methodology which by many is not considered appropriate.”
The annex adds some weight to a growing dossier suggesting biofuels are not as green as once thought – even the more advanced, second generation biofuels made from wood chips.
Biodiesel from European rapeseed has an indirect carbon footprint of 150.3kg of CO2 per gigajoule, while bioethanol from European sugar beet is calculated at 100.3kg – both much higher than conventional diesel or gasoline at around 85kg. By contrast, imports of bioethanol from Latin American sugar cane and palm oil from Southeast Asia get a relatively clean bill of health from the study at 82.3kg and 73.6kg respectively.
But one of the scientists involved with the study cautioned that much work remained to be done before the issue was properly understood, and that no firm conclusions could be drawn about the relative merits of different biofuel sources. – Reuters
SeQuential Pacific Biodiesel is rehiring workers after closing down a month ago, World Link reports. Oregon’s largest bio-diesel plant in Salem was built to produce 5.8 Mmgy. But owners could not run the plant at capacity because of a lack of buyers, and had to store 250,000 gallons in early spring until it could find markets.
The manager said that the plant has begun to run at half capacity. “We need the market to grow before we can get at full production,” he said. Portland’s Water Bureau fleet, for example, moved from a 20% bio-diesel blend to a 99% bio-diesel blend on April 15.
A Minnesota Soybean Processors bio-diesel plant was rocked by a fire and explosions, Bloomberg reports. While the fire was contained, residents nearby were evacuated, and people within a one-mile radius were told to leave their homes, according to the report. The plant in Brewster, Minnesota, processes 50,000 bushels of soybeans a day and makes about 30 Mmgy of fuel.
OriginOil, found its technology the centre of discussion before the Senate Subcommittee on Environment and Public Works in Washington this week, TheBioenergySite News reports. During the session, the President of Sapphire Energy, commented on the many benefits of using algae as the foundation for a new generation of renewable and low carbon transportation fuels.
"Growing algae, and converting it into plastics, fuels, and or secondary feedstock, could significantly help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, reduce energy price shocks, reclaim wastewater, conserve fresh water (in some scenarios), lower food prices, reduce the transfer of US wealth to other nations, and spur regional economic development." Her testimony also named OriginOil as one of the prominent algae-based fuel companies to develop "fascinating algae-based biological carbon capture and beneficial reuse applications". (26 May 2009)
Original text:
De-linking NGOs Concerns over Deforestation and Palm OilSource:
http://ceopalmoil.blogspot.com/2008/10/understanding-ngos-concerns-over.htmlAuthor: Tan Sri Dr Yusof Basiron, CEO, Malaysian Palm Oil promotion Council (MPOPC)
1. A few years ago when oils and fats were cheaper than petroleum, the EU and USA rushed to promote the use of biofuels for various reasons. One not-so-frankly-revealed reason was that oilseed farmers will benefit from the new market outlets and the increase in prices. The governments also benefited from this strategy because agricultural subsidies would be reduced if prices of soybean and rapeseed were high and price support subsidies would not be needed. In addition, it makes good political statements to say that biodiesel will help reduce global warming through reduced green house gas emissions, and also enable the countries to be less dependent on imported petroleum fuels.
2. Diverting a major portion of rapeseed and soy oil supply and stocks for biodiesel did result in increasing prices which benefited the EU and US farmers tremendously between 2004 and the middle of 2008. During this time, it became obvious that palm oil was a potentially good raw material to participate in the biodiesel industries in both the EU and USA as it is generally cheaper than soyabean or rapeseed oil. This resulted in increasing concern amongst the EU biodiesel lobbies who are integrated with the rapeseed industry over the potential competion from palm oil and they tried to prevent it from being imported for biodiesel production and use in the EU. This was also to ensure that biodiesel subsidies are not shared with competing imported oils.
3. Various trade barriers were set up by the goverments. For example, biodiesel standards were developed in the EU to disqualify palm oil biodiesel from being accepted. The cold flow plug point(CFPP) standard was introduced to ensure palm oil did not meet the required test and the anti palm oil lobby was relieved at the new arrangement. However, the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) announced that palm oil biodiesel methyl esters can be processed with a new technology that would overcome the CFPP problem. Furthermore, if the blending of biodiesel is only at 5%, the CFPP value of palm oil biodiesel methyl esters becomes irrelevant as the 5 parts of palm biodiesel is totally dissolved by the 95 parts of petroleum diesel giving an acceptable blend. However, unknown to many, tallow produced in the EU and used for biodiesel would also fail the CFPP test and this would not go well with the local tallow lobbies.
4. EU farmers continue to question the reason for an imported commodity such as palm oil biodiesel to be accorded biofuel subsidy which is meant for local oilseed farmers. The outcries became louder as some power plants began to use palm oil as biofuel and enjoyed the subsidies and the cheaper prices. The rapeseed lobbies were worried that by allowing cheaper palm oil for use as biofuel in vehicles and power plants, it will eventually affect the demand for local oils, and create a substantial outflow of subsidies.(This narrow view ignores the fact that Malaysia imports large amount of EU and US goods and needs market access for its exports in order to remain a valued trading partner.)
5. A new import barrier for palm oil was subsequently introduced arising from the view of the former Dutch Environmental Minister who argued that if palm oil is encouraged for use as biofuel it would stimulate an increase in production leading to the opening of forest land. This apparently will affect the environment, animal habitats and biodiversity. He was able to introduce the fear factor of what could happen in the future if palm oil demand undergoes a rapid increase.
6. The environmental NGOs were quick to sieze on the opportunity to harp on the fear of potential deforestation, and started to report on orang utan habitat loss and global warming effects of oil palm cultivation on peat. The change in focus from deforestation due to logging to now oil palm plantation became a refreshing rallying point for NGOs perpetual campaigns. Afterall palm oil has more money to offer than the logging industry which has over the years witnessed a decline.
7. Once the issues of deforestation and palm oil fell into the hands of NGOs like FOE and Green Peace who use unscrupulus methods to attack their target victims, the whole issue of biodiesel development and protection of subsidies was totally forgotten. The farmers in the EU and USA who are worried by palm oil invasion for the new found application of their oils and fats as biodiesel are totally served by the NGOs who gladly run the anti-palm oil campaign while pocketing huge amount of funds. The collusion to get the NGOs to campaign against palm oil was cleverly disguised. It was reported for example, that the Dutch Lottery money of a staggering US$2 million was instrumental in financing Green Peace to carry out a blockade of a ship carrying palm oil from leaving an Indonesian port to sail to Europe in 2007.
8. It is clear that the fear factor used is based on the assumption that if demand for biofuel is increased, more oil palm cultivation will occur thus causing deforestation. Fortunately, Malaysia has consistently proven the assumption as baseless and wrong.
9. Let me debunk the various fallacies that are often cited to paint a bleak picture of the ever popular oil palm.
Fallacy 1 Oil palm plantations are claimed to be the cause of deforestation. Palm oil producing countries such as Malaysia have permanent forest reserves which take up to 55% of the country's total land area. Laws are in place to disallow these permanent forest areas to be converted to other uses including for agriculture or growing of oil palm. The remaining forest areas are meant for conversion into other uses, including agriculture. Some of these conversion forest areas are already alienated to individuals or organisations although the land may still not yet be converted and remain under forest cover. NGOs like Green Peace argue that these unconverted areas should be declared as forest through a moratorium on deforestation which essentially means a stop to a developing country like Malaysia from using its potential agricultural land to improve the life of its farmers. It is equivalent to asking the EU farmers to reforest back some 50 % of their agricultural land to help prevent global warming and preserve biodiversity. In all fairness, Greenpeace should agressively campaign for reforesting 50 % of agricultural land of the UK and EU and if successful, Malaysia should have no problem following the standard set by the EU in terms of land use ratio for agriculture.
There are also calls by NGOs for the Prince Chales Conservation fund to compensate developing countries for conserving more forests. Logically, these funds would be better used to reforest the over extended and over deforested agricultural areas in the UK. Most agricultural land can be easily reforested if so desired. The slogan "Plant Thy Own Forest" and "Stop Envying Thy Poor Neighbours Green Backyard" can be adopted. Otherwise Green Peace is cunningly introducing double standards where the EU can deforest and develop these areas into agricultural land, while the developing countries farmers are comdemmed to perpetual poverty by preventing them from exercising their sovereign rights to develop their agricultural land.
Fallacy 2 -It is often claimed that the expansion of oil palm cultivation will affect the habitats of the orang utans in Sabah and Sarawak. A recent study revealed that orang utan population is Sabah has not declined because the permanent forest area ( the favourite habitat of the orang utans that was surveyed five years ago) has not changed over the last five years. The study further revealed that the orang utan population in the non-permanent forest areas is increasing based on the survey of nesting sites. More surprisingly, orang utans living near oil palm plantations were observed to regularly visit the plantations to feed on loose oil palm fruitlets and benefit from an all year round availability of a healthy food source which is naturally rich in vitamin A and E, giving the orang utans a healthy shining coat. This suggests that development of the oil palm as a crop and conservation can successfully operate side by side.
Fallacy 3 The third fallacy is linking oil palm to deforestation and attributing this to global warming. The oil palm planted area of 4.3 million hectares in Malaysia represents a mere 0.09% of the world agriculture land. Assuming these areas were originally forests, Malaysia's share of deforestation for world food production is 0.09 %. I wait to see the NGO global warming scientists' prediction on the rise in global temperature caused by oil palm cultivation in Malaysia that resulted in 0.09 % of total deforestion via agricultural development. Even doubling the oil palm area may not add substantially to the world deforestation total. However, expanding oil palm may save deforestation by curtailing the rapid expansion of other inefficient land-use oil seed crops which need to be grown otherwise to overcome world shortages.
Fallacy 4Potraying palm oil as inferior to soyabean or rapeseed oil in global warming debate. Oil palm in Malaysia and Indonesia is an agricultural crop which is grown mainly for the export market. We are the only two major net exporter countries (Argentina is a distant third) for vegetable oils and fats. The rest of the world are mostly net importers. It implies that if palm oil supply is reduced in the future, ten times more forest areas will need to be converted to agriculture to meet the shortages by growing soyabean or other annual oilseed crops compared to the area needed to grow oil palm to produce the targeted quantity of oil.
Recently, it was revealed that new varieties of oil palm are capable of increasing the yield by 3 times more and if further research to stabilise this yield potential is undertaken through international collaboration, palm oil can be a sound candidate to help solve not only future food shortages but also the biofuel need of the world. In simple terms, it has been calculated that a hectare of oil palm will potentially produce oil sufficient to fuel a VW Polo car 400,000 km of travel per year including the use of the methane fuel generated by the oil palm mill effluent, while a hectare of soya bean can fuel only 8,000 km of travel by the same car as a comparison. The irony is that the EU and USA are gladly promoting the most inefficient bio fuel derived from soyabean and rapeseed sources ,which can only mean massive deforestation possibly in Agentina, Brazil or where ever soyabean and rapeseed can be grown. The opportunity for oil palm to serve as an efficient fuel source and to save more forests from being converted into soyabean and rapeseed farms is sadly overlooked and we can only blame this on the manupulative science which is used by NGOs to raise emotions and blur the truth from reaching the attention of decision and policy makers in the EU and USA.
Petrobras has confirmed that despite a lack of castor oil, it still plans to expand Biodiesel Quixada in Ceara state by 40%, the Dairio de Nordeste reports. The plant is currently using soy and cotton oil.
This week, the president of Petrobras Biofuels signed contracts with six cooperatives in Ceara and Piaui states to offer technical guidance on castor growing to 31,450 small farmers in the region.
Petrobras expects Brazil’s bio-diesel output to rise from 1.2 billion litres to 1.6 billion before the B4 mandate comes into effect. Gazeta Mercantil adds that the company will also help the farmers with storage and transportation, and will ensure the purchase for a five-year period of their crops for prices previously set with the cooperatives. (May 21, 2009)
The go ahead has been given for a $243 million soybean processing and bio-diesel production facility at Port Kembla, ABC News reports.
New South Wales’ Minister for Lands, said: "This is the first integrated soybean processing and bio-diesel production facility in Australia and is a major boost to the Illawarra. The project is expected to generate $977 million in revenue and in addition to the 235 new permanent full-time jobs, will provide approximately 725 jobs in related industries and a further 500 jobs during construction of the facility. The plant will produce 288 million litres of bio-diesel a year; along with 850,000 tonnes of soy bean meal for poultry and livestock feed”."
In July 2007 the NSW Government implemented legislation to mandate the blending of all diesel fuel blended with 2% bio-diesel, the mandate will increase from two per cent to five per cent in 2011," he added. (19 May 2009)
