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A report published by the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, says some first generation biofuels such as ethanol from sugar cane can have positive impacts in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. The report Towards Sustainable Production and Use of Resources: Assessing Biofuels is based on a detailed review of published research up to mid-2009 as well as the input of independent experts world-wide. The idea is to help governments and industry in making sustainable choices in an area that over the past few years “has become deeply divided while triggering sharply polarized viewsâ€.
The report says a far more sophisticated approach needs to be taken when developing biofuels as an environmentally-friendly energy option. Governments should fit biofuels into an overall energy, climate, land-use, water and agricultural strategy if their deployment is to benefit society, the economy and the environment as a whole.
The document mentions the case of Brazilian ethanol, about which we have been blogging quite often of late, as a success story. However, the way in which biofuels are produced matters in determining whether they are leading to more or less greenhouse gas emissions. The report identified conditions under which production of biofuels does lead to higher emissions
One of the negative examples given is the production and use of biodiesel from palm oil on deforested peatlands in the tropics. It can lead to frighteningly high increases in greenhouse gas emissions – up to 2,000 percent or more when compared with fossil fuels. This is mainly as a result of carbon releases from the soils and land. The situation would be different if the palm oil or soya beans are instead grown on abandoned or degraded land.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, which hosts the Resource Panel, said : “Biofuels are neither a panacea nor a pariah but like all technologies they represent both opportunities and challenges. Therefore a more sophisticated debate is urgently needed which is what this first report by the Panel is intended to provide. On one level, it is a debate about which energy crops to grow and where and also about the way different countries and biofuel companies promote and manage the production and conversion of plant materials for energy purposes – some clearly are climate friendly while others are highly questionableâ€.
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Thanks for posting about palm oil. Around 90% of the global supply comes from Indonesia and Malaysia, and this has come at a tremendous cost. The forests of Borneo and Sumatra are being razed to the ground– releasing so much carbon into the atmosphere that Indonesia now ranks only behind China and US in carbon emissions– and it is barely industrialized. The UNEP estimates that the forests of Indonesia are being cleared at a rate of 6 football fields per minute every minute of every day.
The palm oil industry is guilty of the most heinous ecological atrocities imaginable, including the systematic genocide of orangutans. The forests of Borneo and Sumatra are the only place where these gentle, intelligent creatures live, and the cultivation of palm oil has directly led to the brutal deaths of thousands of individuals as the industry has expanded into previously undisturbed areas of forest.
When the forest is cleared, adult orangutans are typically shot on sight. These peaceful, sentient beings are beaten, burned, mutilated, tortured and often eaten. Babies are torn off their dying mothers so they can be sold on the black market as illegal pets to wealthy families who see them as status symbols of their own power and prestige. This has been documented time and again.
Visit the Orangutan Outreach website to learn more: http://www.redapes.org
Thanks for your time!
It’s nice to know that a lot of people have been pushing efforts to make planet earth a better place. With biofuels, and all other alternative resources for energy, we might be able to curb the growing problem that is global warming and at the same time preserve the ecosystems of the world. The Earth’s natural forces such as wind, hydro and solar power are limitless and effective ways to gain energy. So unless the winds stop blowing, the seas stop roaring or the sun dies out, there’ll always be a place to go for energy. Kudos mother earth!