Energy Companies Rethink Palm Oil As Biofuel - ENN

[hatrack]

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- Once, palm oil was seen as an ideal biofuel, a cheap alternative to petroleum that would fight global warming. But second thoughts are wracking the power industry. Can the fruit of the palm tree help save the planet -- or contribute to its destruction?

Environmentalists have long warned that many plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, where 85 percent of commercial palm oil is grown, were planted on cleared rain forest, threatening the home of endangered animals like the orangutan and the Sumatran tiger. Now, amid global efforts to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, power companies have joined conservationists in calculating the carbon count of producing palm oil fuel -- and found the balance increasingly negative. A few companies have put plans on hold to switch to palm oil.

A report late last year by a Netherlands-based research group claimed some plantations produce far more carbon dioxide than they save. Seeded on drained peat swamps, they unleash a warehouse of carbon from decomposed plants and animals that had been locked in the bogs for hundreds of million years, which one biologist described as "buried sunshine." "As a biofuel, it's a failure," said Marcel Silvius, a climate change expert for Wetlands International, the institute that led the research team.

The palm oil debate is just one example of cold realism dampening enthusiasm for vegetable oils as substitutes for the fossil fuels that are widely blamed for the gradual warming of the Earth and potentially disastrous changes in climate.

EDIT

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=12465

[GliderGuider]

1. Imagine that. Who could have predicted that???

[lapfog_1]

2. That's always been the issue with the oil palm...

looks good on paper... then you have to consider WHERE it can be grown, and that's the rub.

Crop kg oil/ha litre/ha lbs oil/acre US gal/acre
corn (maize) 145 172 129 18
cashew nut 148 176 132 19
oats 183 217 163 23
lupine 195 232 175 25
kenaf 230 273 205 29
calendula 256 305 229 33
cotton 273 325 244 35
hemp 305 363 272 39
soybean 375 446 335 48
coffee 386 459 345 49
linseed (flax) 402 478 359 51
hazelnuts 405 482 362 51
euphorbia 440 524 393 56
pumpkin seed 449 534 401 57
coriander 450 536 402 57
mustard seed 481 572 430 61
camelina 490 583 438 62
sesame 585 696 522 74
safflower 655 779 585 83
rice 696 828 622 88
tung oil tree 790 940 705 100
sunflowers 800 952 714 102
cocoa (cacao) 863 1026 771 110
peanuts 890 1059 795 113
opium poppy 978 1163 873 124
rapeseed 1000 1190 893 127
olives 1019 1212 910 129
castor beans 1188 1413 1061 151
pecan nuts 1505 1791 1344 191
jojoba 1528 1818 1365 194
jatropha 1590 1892 1420 202
macadamia nuts 1887 2246 1685 240
brazil nuts 2010 2392 1795 255
avocado 2217 2638 1980 282
coconut 2260 2689 2018 287
oil palm 5000 5950 4465 635

(sorry for the formatting problem... does anyone know how to insert a table here?)

Oil palm... 635 gallons per acre per year... versus, say, sunflowers at 102 or linseed at 51 or corn at 18.

Of course, the automakers just told bush that ethanol (from corn) was THE answer!!!

Math problems for the reader... how many acres of corn would be needed to provide the current consumption needs of the US auto fleet (we'll leave out diesel uses like the trucking industry for now) if everyone used E85??? How many acres of corn are currently in production? How much gasoline would be needed to farm those acres (even if we had them)? Where will the EXTRA cropland come from (what crops or animals will we give up to produce the E85?)

[GliderGuider]

3. Here's my little thought experiment again

Convert ALL the world's major crops into fuel, either biodiesel or ethanol. Convert the output to the same energy basis as oil.

Q: How much of the world's current oil requirement would you end up with?
A: About 8%.

The implication is that for every 1% of our current oil use you substitute with crop-sourced biofuels, you reduce the world's food supply by 12%.

Details here: http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Biofuels.html

[lapfog_1]

4. I agree with the sentiment

but no one would logically do what is proposed in the thesis, namely simply convert various crops into ethanol or vegetable oil. The reason is the purpose of the crop determines which crop one might grow. Wheat is not a good crop to consider for any kind of energy conversion, nor are most grains.

However, the point is well taken that if you were to take acres out of production for, say, wheat, and plant sunflowers or poppy plants or avocados for their oil content, the number of acres needed to get us off the petroleum habit is still huge, and the amount of wheat grown for food is vastly reduced, which means that food prices will skyrocket and starvation for many people of the world follows (already the price of tortillas in Mexico is rising as a direct result of more corn being diverted to the production of Ethanol).

However, there is still hope... it's just not in the table of crops I listed. And it can be grown in areas that are non traditional for crop production. And the number of acres needed is far less.

All is for naught if we can't control population growth and become much much more efficient in our energy use AND our use of other resources.