Good
oil, bad environmental effect, ugly cost
The Sydney Morning Heald (June 19, 2007)
The drive for biofuel has destroyed rainforests and released carbon,
writes Craig Simons.
Borneo should be a beachhead in the fight against global warming.
Shared by Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, the island produces much of
the world's palm oil, the most energy-efficient of several vegetable
oils being used in place of fossil fuels. Instead, Borneo is becoming a
case study in how good environmental intentions can backfire.
Driven by government subsidies for biofuels, which are made partly from
plants and release less carbon dioxide than fossil fuels when burned,
companies have cleared thousands of square kilometres of rainforest and
drained swamps that have trapped carbon in their watery depths for
millennia.
Since the 1970s Malaysia and Indonesia have drained 120,000 square
kilometres of peat swamps for plantations and other land uses. The two
countries have announced plans to drain another 31,000 square
kilometres over the next 20 years, says Wetlands International, an
environmental group in the Netherlands. As the peat has dried, and
sometimes burned, it has released huge amounts of carbon dioxide into
the atmosphere. Drained peat swamps in Indonesia and Malaysia annually
released 2 billion tonnes of carbon between 1997 and last year, an
amount roughly equal to 8 per cent of annual global emissions from the
burning of fossil fuels, says a study released in December by Wetlands
International and Delft Hydraulics, a research institute affiliated
with the Dutch Government. If emissions from peat swamps were factored
into calculations of national greenhouse gas emissions, Indonesia would
jump from 21st place to third, behind the United States and China, the
environmental group found.
"Many people think that producing more palm oil and switching to palm
oil [as a biofuel] will help fight global warming, but in the peat
lands there is a huge release of carbon dioxide," says Alue Dohong, the
director of Wetland International's office in Palangkaraya, in
Indonesian Borneo.
Palm oil has been used in the West for decades as an additive to food
and cosmetics - still its primary use worldwide - but demand for it as
a fuel is likely to drive future clearing of peat land, experts said.
In 2003 the European Union passed a resolution calling on member states
to replace 20 per cent of fossil fuels with biofuels, including
biodiesel made with palm oil, by 2020. Some US states give tax breaks
to companies using biofuels and analysts expect demand to grow as
Washington tries to wean Americans off oil.
Dohong spends much of his time ferrying visitors around Palangkaraya
and explaining the relationship between peat - water-soaked plant
detritus that in places is more than 21 metres deep - and global
warming.
Standing on the bank of a canal an hour's drive from the city, Dohong
pointed to black water leaking from the earth. When canals are dug to
drain peat swamps and transport logs to market, the peat dries and
oxygen combines with the trapped carbon, releasing carbon dioxide to
the atmosphere, he says.
Because dry peat is extremely flammable, fires frequently erupt on
cleared land. In 1997 fires in Indonesia sent smoke billowing
throughout South-East Asia and released massive amounts of carbon
dioxide. A 2002 study by British scientists estimated that the 1997
fires released 15 to 40 per cent as much carbon as the world's total
emissions from burning fossil fuels that year.
Worldwide, existing and planned refineries able to convert palm oil
into fuel by mixing it with diesel "should absorb the bulk of palm oil
inventories" and "will constitute new demand", the investment bank
Credit Suisse said in a January report.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/good-oil-bad-environmental-effect-ugly-cost/2007/06/18/1182019030503.html#
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