New palm oil biodiesel effectiveness claim from Indonesia
After the EPA announced that palm oil did not meet the requirements of the US renewable fuels standard earlier this year, new research claims that it could reach the 20% lower emissions required under RFA to qualify.
The EPA had set a carbon emission reduction requirement for palm oil to at least 20% to enable it to be used as raw biofuel in the US. Its research reported palm oil biodiesel had just 11 – 17% lower emissions than petroleum-based fuels.
But Professor Budi Indra Setiawan of the Bogor Agricultural Institute, Jakarta feels the assumptions and data used by the EPA should be reviewed.
‘55% of land allocated for palm oil plantations was made up of non-forest land and only a small percentage came from primary forest,’ says Setiawan.
‘The CO2 emission calculated here at Bogor is 50 tonnes of CO2 per hectare per year which is equivalent to 28% emission reduction, much higher than the 20% required by the EPA.’
Setiawan is also confident that the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil initiative (a scheme designed to make palm oil production sustainable in compliance with laws and regulations) will soon be implemented to further boost production.