PALM oil has become a byword for environmental destruction. Found in food and cosmetics, its growing use is destroying rainforests and endangering species like orangutans. In an effort to turn things around, UK supermarket Iceland pledged last month to halt the use of palm oil in its own-brand products. But the real problem isnât in your kitchen cupboard or bathroom cabinet â it is in your car.
Half of all the palm oil imported by Europe is turned into biodiesel and blended into conventional fuel to power cars and trucks. This misguided attempt to âgreenâ fuels is actually tripling carbon emissions, not reducing them. Whatâs more, the practice is subsidised by the European Union. In other words, taxpayers are paying to destroy rainforests and accelerate climate change.
âPeople donât know that they have palm oil in their fuel tanks,â says Laura Buffet of , Belgium, which campaigns for cleaner transport in Europe.
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And yet, while palm oil has acquired a reputation as a villain, the plant itself, called oil palm, is something of a hero. It is up to nine times as productive per hectare as other sources of vegetable oils such as rapeseed (canola) and soybeans, meaning it requires less land (see Graph).
Palm oil is also very versatile. It can be turned into liquid oils or solid butter-like blocks used in everything from ice cream and biscuits to soap and shampoo. As such, it is found in around half of all supermarket products.
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The problem is that we are cutting down some of the most species-rich rainforests in the world to plant ever more oil palms. Growing demand is driving massive deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia, which produce 90 per cent of palm oil.
To halt this destruction, demand must be curbed. The obvious solution is to ditch palm oil from foods, but this approach is likely to fail.
Unless we stop making a huge variety of products, we will always need vegetable oils. Using âsustainableâ palm oil, as most UK supermarkets have pledged to do, wonât stop demand rising (see âBuying âsustainableâ palm oil wonât halt deforestationâ). Ditch palm oil, and food producers will just use more of other oils instead, which have higher land requirements (see âWonder cropâ). For instance, it could lead to further expansion of soya farming in Brazil and drive more deforestation there.
âAny single-ingredient solution risks transferring the problem from one supply chain to the other,â says Giovanni Colombo, a spokesperson for the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, an industry body. While some independent researchers agree, others say risks are exaggerated.
âWhile palm oil has acquired a reputation as a villain, the plant itself is actually something of a heroâ
âPalm oil has a worse greenhouse-gas footprint than any other vegetable oil and causes habitat loss of endangered species,â says Stephanie Searle of the International Council on Clean Transportation in Washington DC. âItâs better to expand 5 hectares of rapeseed production onto abandoned cropland in Europe than to destroy 1 hectare of peat swamp forest in Indonesia.â
But even if we do reduce palm oilâs use in food, it wonât be enough. The hidden and growing use of palm oil for biofuel is a much bigger issue. Of the 7 million tonnes of palm oil imported by Europe each year, . âAll the growth has been in energy demand,â says Marc-Olivier Herman of Oxfam.
Globally, palm oil production hit 65 million tonnes in 2017, nearly 20 per cent of which was used for biofuel, says Sathia Varqa of data firm .
Demand for palm oil could shoot up to 140 million tonnes in 2030, with nearly 50 per cent of that being turned into biofuel, according to a for the Rainforest Foundation Norway published in December 2017 (see âDriving higherâ). âThereâs an enormous risk,â says the author, Chris Malins.
Indonesia, for instance, has adopted targets for aviation use that are essentially , says Malins. âAviation could be an even bigger driver of deforestation than biofuels used for road transport.â
Cutting down rainforests to fuel our cars and planes doesnât seem very green. And yet the growth in palm-oil biofuel is actually being driven by government policies and subsidies intended to reduce carbon emissions.
Under European rules, for instance, 10 per cent of transport energy is supposed to come from renewable sources by 2020. To meet this target, countries are blending biofuels like palm-oil biodiesel with conventional fuels.
Fuelling destruction
Yet in the vast majority of cases, the use of biofuels actually increases overall emissions because their carbon cost is not properly accounted for (see âThe Colossal Carbon Conâ). âItâs a crazy thing to do,â says Searle.
In the rogue gallery of biofuels, palm-oil biodiesel is the worst. Transport & Environment calculates that using palm-oil biodiesel triples emissions versus burning fossil fuels, based on .
This shocking figure isnât only from burning the fuel, but also from the burning of rainforests to grow oil palm, which releases lots of carbon. Whatâs more, there are vast stores of peat under many rainforests, which when drained decompose and can release carbon for decades.
All this might make it sound as if the answer is just to ban the use of palm oil for biofuels. Indeed, the European parliament, which passes EU laws, thinks so. In January, it voted to end subsidies for palm-oil biodiesel from 2020. The vote has no force, though: the final decision depends on further EU wrangling. âIt is not clear what is going to happen,â says Buffet.
âThe growth in palm oil is being driven by policies and subsidies intended to reduce carbon emissionsâ
However, if the EU ends subsidies for palm-oil biodiesel, but keeps its overall biofuel targets, cars will be fuelled with soybean or rapeseed oil instead. This would push up their prices and make food producers switch to palm oil instead.
Thatâs because the markets are all interlinked: any increase in demand for vegetable oil â whether for food, cosmetics or biofuel â contributes to the palm-oil problem. âIf you use rapeseed oil, you are basically using palm oil,â says Tim Searchinger of Princeton University.
This has happened in the US, which stipulates that conventional fuels must be blended with biofuel, but hasnât approved the use of palm oil because its carbon emissions are the highest of any other vegetable oil. As more soybean was turned into biodiesel, Searle says, the US started importing large quantities of palm oil for use in food.
All this means that if nations stopped subsidising food-based biofuels, there would be a huge drop in demand for palm oil, which would help halt deforestation and loss of biodiversity. Carbon emissions and food prices would fall, and poor people would benefit â Oxfam campaigns against food-based biofuels because they make food costly. âItâs just inherently nuts,â says Searchinger. âWe just have to stop.â
Unfortunately, despite , things are still moving in the wrong direction â not least because of lobbying from the biofuels industry. The EU has capped support for food-based biofuels, but looks set to keep subsiding them until 2030. Many other countries are introducing or ramping up biofuels targets.
But itâs not all doom and gloom. There is a much better way to green road transport: electric cars. These are to run than cars powered by fossil fuel, produce hardly any air pollution and can be powered by solar or wind energy.
After all, bioenergy is just an inefficient form of solar energy. Plants capture only a fraction of a per cent of solar energy compared with 16 per cent for current solar panels. âPhotosynthesis sucks,â says Searchinger.
The challenge now is to persuade governments to change tack. Ending subsidies for all food-based biofuels would be a win for forests, climate action, taxpayers â and orangutans.
Buying âsustainableâ palm oil wonât halt deforestation
With palm oil becoming a dirty word, many food producers are hoping to hold on to their green credentials by only using âsustainableâ supplies. But buying palm oil from producers certified as sustainable doesnât solve the key problem of rising global demand, which is leading to the clearance of rainforests to make space for more plantations.
Certification can help protect workersâ rights and reduce local pollution, but does little to slow down deforestation, says Chris Malins, author of a report on palm oil for the Rainforest Foundation Norway.
As you would expect, certification bodies say otherwise. âAlthough our certification is not perfect, it does make a difference,â says Giovanni Colombo, a spokesperson for the biggest certifier, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. â[It has] helped to slow down deforestation.â
But only around 20 per cent of palm oil produced globally is certified by the RSPO. A study published in December 2017 found that more than 99 per cent of the remaining forest in Indonesia is outside areas controlled by certified growers (PNAS, ).
The study also looked at the age of certified plantations, and found that the average date of planting was 1993. That means the growers opting for certification are the ones that have been operating for a long time, and so have already cut down all the forest they intend to, says Malins. This suggests the owners of newer plantations generally arenât signing up to the scheme.
If nearly all growers were certified and the rules were enforced by strict monitoring, it would have greater success in reducing deforestation. âBut thatâs an awfully long way off,â says Malins.
Even the RSPO acknowledges there is more work to be done. âToo many palm-oil producers still fall outside the scope of the RSPO certification, and this is one of the main reasons why deforestation is still continuing,â says Colombo.
The Colossal Carbon Con
If using palm oil as fuel massively increases carbon emissions, why are we doing it?
Itâs all part of a much bigger issue with bioenergy. Essentially, loopholes in international carbon accounting rules mean the full emissions from biomass never get counted. âYou could cut down the Amazon, ship the trees to Europe to replace coal and that would count as a 100 per cent greenhouse gas reduction,â says Tim Searchinger of Princeton University.
This problem is set to get worse. Last week, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced it would start treating wood burning as a carbon-neutral energy source. Such a policy is likely to cause a large increase in carbon emissions.
This article appeared in print under the headline âForget food, itâs in your carâ
