Worse Than Fossil Fuel

Posted December 6, 2005

Biodiesel enthusiasts have accidentally invented the most carbon-intensive fuel on earth

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 6th December 2005

The article goes on to explain how Sumatran forests are being decimated by the European demand for bio-fuels from palm oil plantations.

In promoting biodiesel – as the European Union, the British and US governments and thousands of environmental campaigners do – you might imagine that you are creating a market for old chip fat, or rapeseed oil, or oil from algae grown in desert ponds. In reality you are creating a market for the most destructive crop on earth.

Last week, the chairman of Malaysia’s Federal Land Development Authority announced that he was about to build a new biodiesel plant(4). His was the ninth such decision in four months. Four new refineries are being built in Peninsula Malaysia, one in Sarawak and two in Rotterdam(5). Two foreign consortia – one German, one American – are setting up rival plants in Singapore(6). All of them will be making biodiesel from the same source: oil from palm trees.

“The demand for biodiesel,” the Malaysian Star reports, “will come from the European Community … This fresh demand … would, at the very least, take up most of Malaysia’s crude palm oil inventories”(7). Why? Because it’s cheaper than biodiesel made from any other crop.

In September, Friends of the Earth published a report about the impacts of palm oil production. “Between 1985 and 2000,” it found, “the development of oil-palm plantations was responsible for an estimated 87 per cent of deforestation in Malaysia”(8). In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares of forest has been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million hectares is scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5m in Indonesia.

Almost all the remaining forest is at risk. Even the famous Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan is being ripped apart by oil planters. The orang-utan is likely to become extinct in the wild. Sumatran rhinos, tigers, gibbons, tapirs, proboscis monkeys and thousands of other species could go the same way. Thousands of indigenous people have been evicted from their lands, and some 500 Indonesians have been tortured when they tried to resist(9). The forest fires which every so often smother the region in smog are mostly started by the palm growers. The entire region is being turned into a gigantic vegetable oil field.

Before oil palms, which are small and scrubby, are planted, vast forest trees, containing a much greater store of carbon, must be felled and burnt. Having used up the drier lands, the plantations are now moving into the swamp forests, which grow on peat. When they’ve cut the trees, the planters drain the ground. As the peat dries it oxidises, releasing even more carbon dioxide than the trees. In terms of its impact on both the local and global environments, palm biodiesel is more destructive than crude oil from Nigeria.

There is also a section on the scale of bio-fuel needs for vegetation which proves to be mistaken. The research by Jeffrey Dukes claims that 22% of the world's annual vegetation would be needed to meet the current world energy needs.

The whole article is on http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossil-fuel/#more-964

It confirms for me that vast solar expansion is the only route for retaining a significant primary energy source for the world.

Malcolm

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Malcolm Crocker:

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L03880917.htm .......Silvius told Reuters that a study with Dutch water research institute Delft Hydraulics estimated that "annual peatland emissions from South-East Asia far exceed fossil fuel contributions from major polluting countries." Indonesia, which is now in 21st place in a world ranking of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, would move to third place behind the United States and China if peat were taken into account, it said. Wetlands International estimated that emissions from Indonesian peatlands alone, when drained or burnt, total 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year -- almost a tenth of world greenhouse gas emissions from human activities led by burning coal, oil and natural gas.......... .....Taking account of emissions from land clearance, "we estimate that a tonne of palm oil grown on drained peatland emits 20 times more carbon dioxide than a tonne of gasoline," he said....... Guess what Indonesia will say if someone tries to add a carbon tax 20 times that of petrol to palm oil exports. Wars have started over less. Greg

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