Malaysia, Indonesia Will Pump Out 40% More Palm Oil Biodiesel
Malaysia and Indonesia decided this week to convert surpluses of edible palm oil into biodiesel fuel.
Currently, the two southeast Asian countries grow about 85% of the world’s palm oil and control 88% of all palm oil exports. But amid stalled plans for more production plants and a slowing demand for palm oil, the countries are beginning to worry.
The proposal to turn so much food to fuel comes as an attempt to increase demand for palm biodiesel and drive up prices. In 2007, palm oil biodiesel prices made a dizzying 80% jump to over $944 per tonne. However, when prices hit today’s price of $871 per tonne lags just below prices seven months ago.
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“We have palm oil stocks which are fetching unreasonably low price in the world market. So we want to increase its usage to produce biodiesel for the local market,” said Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Datuk Peter Chin Fah Kui.
Although the new biodiesel will be produced from existing supplies of oil, this hike in palm oil biodiesel production is likely to draw fire from some environmental groups. Greenpeace, for instance, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest both oppose palm oil. They have expressed concern that palm oil plantations are responsible for large clearings of rainforest land, which threatens local species that are sensitive to habitat loss. Most notably, groups have embraced the orangutan as a flagship species threatened by palm oil production.
In response to these concerns, Finnish biodiesel company Neste Oil and the World Wildlife Fund have created a program to certify biodiesel that’s produced sustainably. The program is called the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil, or RSPO.
In January, EcoWorldly took an in-depth look at Asia’s Biodiesel Dilemma, where we listed some of the ecological pros and cons of palm oil boidiesel.
Sources: Biofuels Digest (August 5, 2008), Biofuels Digest (January 22, 2008), Bernama.
More Reading About Asian Palm Oil Biodiesel
Samsung to Invest $1.63 Billion in Indonesian Biodiesel Project
International Biofuels Part II
The challenge of sustainable palm oil
Photo source: cslor via Flickr, under a Creative Commons license.
Bio-diesel from palm is a renewable sustainable fuel, and like most bio-diesels is if not edible, at least non-poisonous! Americans won’t use diesel in their cars, they feel they are too good for that! - they are sick bastards and they are about to learn a life lesson even their bombs and planes can’t prevent - we are out of oil! If the U.S. had chosen to be a moral people, and leaving Iraqi oil alone, and following Al Gore, decided to develop the South Western deserts, with the technology of the times - solar/thermal-molten sodium - electricity installations, for the same amount of money as that war cost, ($650 Billion), today, we would be tapping into the largest, renewable, sustainable, energy source the world has ever known. It would have paid every energy bill in the U.S.A. for maintenance fees only - FOREVER! It would be equivalent to an oil field that can NEVER run dry! Low cost electric power, and storeable hydrogen gasoline replacement from the electricity, for all!
After the millions of murders, and $650 billions of dollars, borrowed from our children’s futures and pissed away, with thousands of our own and others maimed and disfigured for life, millions of families utterly destroyed, ours and theirs, we are no closer to Iraqi oil production than the Iraqis are!
The next time you hear a blithering idiot spoiled brat, drunken, drug addicted, sociopath, rich Arabic saber dancing daddie’s boy oilman, stand at a microphone and threaten YOUR safety with someone ELSE’S weapons, remember what you lost America, remember, and weep! (also see http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan)
Honestly, when you consider the alternative to using things like palm oil or sugar cane to make fuel, palm oil is certainly the lesser of two evils. Palm oil is at least sustainable where drilling for oil is not.
Better yet, people could stop driving and use public transport. That would solve many problems. I work at hotel in Prague and the public transport is so good that I have only been in a car once since I’ve been here.
C Bird, I agree that public transit is the way to go. Good to know that about Prague. It’s sounding more and more like an excellent place to live.
I came across your article and felt obliged to point out another downside to palm oil. In order to cultivate it, palm oil corporations completely level the forests. Hundreds of thousands of square acres of pristine rainforest in Indonesia and Malaysia have already been converted– and every living creature in these forests has been systematically killed in the process. Just as a side note, the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere from this destruction is far greater than the carbon coming from the glut of SUVs burning fossil fuels as they speed across the highways of North America.
By far, the biggest victim of the palm oil industry is the orangutan. The forests of Borneo and Sumatra are the only place where orangutans live, and the cultivation of palm oil has directly led to the horribly brutal deaths of thousands of individuals.
Orangutan Outreach is a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing the extinction of orangutans in the wild. Its mission is twofold: 1) bringing attention to the crisis facing orangutans from the spread of palm oil plantations, and 2) raising funds for orangutan rehabilitation projects in Borneo. Orangutan Outreach supports the efforts of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, whose main care center, Nyaru Menteng, is featured on Animal Planet’s series ‘Orangutan Island’. The orphanage is now home to over 650 orangutans– many as young as a few weeks old. Nearly all of their mothers have been murdered by palm oil companies. When rainforest is being cleared, adult orangutans are shot on sight. Babies are often ripped off their dying mothers and sold on the black market to rich families as illegal pets.
To learn more about the crisis facing wild orangutans from palm oil and see how you can help, please visit the Orangutan Outreach website: http://redapes.org
Maybe you’d even like to adopt a baby orangutan!
Thank you for your time,
Richard Zimmerman
Director, Orangutan Outreach
http://redapes.org
Reach out and save the orangutans!
Dear Mr. Zimmerman,
Thank you for the resource and link.
Best,
Gavin
i am interested to purchase palm oil & biodiesel to indial. please send your best prise to CIF India.