Thursday August 27, 2009

Palm oil : RSPO group pushes for environment-friendly standards

features.csmonitor.com :

Palm oil : companies can't get enough of the "golden plant" grown in Indonesia and Malaysia to keep up with demand. So plantations are burning and clearing rain forests - often illegally - to plant more palm trees. Clearing the jungle belches carbon into the air and is pushing orangutans to extinction. Now, a Malaysian-based network is pushing to end the destruction by adopting more eco-friendly standards. The RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) has signed up corporations such as Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, Colgate-Palmolive, Cargill, The Body Shop, and Cadbury. The RSPO certified its first "green" batches a year ago, and now accounts for 1.4 million tons, or 3% of the world supply of crude palm oil.

It represents a first step in a very long journey for the prized vegetable oil that appears all over supermarket shelves - in detergent, soap, cooking oil, bread, candy bars, cosmetics - and, increasingly, in biofuels. There are plenty of gaps in enforcement of the new standards, however. Sustainable plantations don't produce much yet. The global appetite is so voracious that some brands mix "good" palm oil with "bad." A single chocolate bar, for instance, might contain oil from a compliant plantation and one that's not.

- Palm oil. Peakoilers are well aware that it is an incredibly useful substance, and yet at the same time it is an increasing problem : Haze and burnt forests. Questionable EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested). Food vs fuel.

This RSPO thing. It sounds like a good idea, and I'm glad that they at least try.

But we need to do a bit more than that.

We need to recognize that biodiesels as a whole, with energy return ratios barely over the breakeven point of 1.00, and arguably many of them don't even make 1.00, aren't a terribly bright idea. We need to recognize that food for people should take precedence over fuel for cars. We need to recognize that, the energy we use worldwide every year is equivalent to over 400 years of total worldwide plant and animal growth. We need to recognize that, well, we need to find a better way. Biofuels are not the answer. They never have been the answer.

See also :

1. So much for biodiesel
2. Malaysia wants to be world's biggest biodiesel producer
3. Hazy days and palm oil
4. Scientists weigh downside of palm oil
5. Climate deals turn up heat in Indonesia's dark peatlands

(2009-08-27 21:38:59 SGT) [Env] Permalink

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