Measured greenhouse gas budgets challenge emission savings from palm-oil biodiesel

Special thanks to our field assistants in Indonesia (Basri, Bayu and Darwis) and to Frank Tiedemann, Edgar Tunsch, Dietmar Fellert and Malte Puhan for technical assistance. We thank PTPN VI and the owner of the plantation at Pompa Air for allowing us to conduct our research at their plantation. We would also like to thank the Spanish national project GEISpain (CGL2014-52838-C2-1-R) and the DAAD (scholarship from the programme ‘Research Stays for University Academics and Scientist 2018, ref. no. 91687130)' for partly financing A. Meijide during the preparation of this paper.The potential of palm-oil biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared with fossil fuels is increasingly questioned. So far, no measurement-based GHG budgets were available, and plantation age was ignored in Life Cycle Analyses (LCA). Here, we conduct LCA based on measured CO2, CH4 and N2O fluxes in young and mature Indonesian oil palm plantations. CO2 dominates the on-site GHG budgets. The young plantation is a carbon source (1012 ± 51 gC m−2 yr−1), the mature plantation a sink (−754 ± 38 gC m−2 yr−1). LCA considering the measured fluxes shows higher GHG emissions for palm-oil biodiesel than traditional LCA assuming carbon neutrality. Plantation rotation-cycle extension and earlier-yielding varieties potentially decrease GHG emissions. Due to the high emissions associated with forest conversion to oil palm, our results indicate that only biodiesel from second rotation-cycle plantations or plantations established on degraded land has the potential for pronounced GHG emission savings.This study was financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)— Project-ID 192626868—in the framework of the collaborative German-Indonesian research project CRC990 (subprojects A03, A04 and A05).Spanish national project GEISpain (CGL2014-52838-C2-1-R) and the DAAD (scholarship from the programme ‘Research Stays for University Academics and Scientist 2018, ref. no. 91687130

LCA applied to perennial cropping systems: a review focused on the farm stage

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The environmental impacts of palm oil in context

Delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires balancing demands on land between agriculture (SDG 2) and biodiversity (SDG 15). The production of vegetable oils, and in particular palm oil, illustrates these competing demands and trade-offs. Palm oil accounts for 40% of the current global annual demand for vegetable oil as food, animal feed, and fuel (210 million tons (Mt)), but planted oil palm covers less than 5-5.5% of total global oil crop area (ca. 425 Mha), due to oil palm’s relatively high yields5. Recent oil palm expansion in forested regions of Borneo, Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula, where >90% of global palm oil is produced, has led to substantial concern around oil palm’s role in deforestation. Oil palm expansion’s direct contribution to regional tropical deforestation varies widely, ranging from 3% in West Africa to 47% in Malaysia. Oil palm is also implicated in peatland draining and burning in Southeast Asia. Documented negative environmental impacts from such expansion include biodiversity declines, greenhouse gas emissions, and air pollution. However, oil palm generally produces more oil per area than other oil crops, is often economically viable in sites unsuitable for most other crops, and generates considerable wealth for at least some actors. Global demand for vegetable oils is projected to increase by 46% by 20509. Meeting this demand through additional expansion of oil palm versus other vegetable oil crops will lead to substantial differential effects on biodiversity, food security, climate change, land degradation, and livelihoods. Our review highlights that, although substantial gaps remain in our understanding of the relationship between the environmental, socio-cultural and economic impacts of oil palm, and the scope, stringency and effectiveness of initiatives to address these, there has been little research into the impacts and trade-offs of other vegetable oil crops. 65 Greater research attention needs to be given to investigating the impacts of palm oil production 66 compared to alternatives for the trade-offs to be assessed at a global scale