Indonesia: Plant power can solve fuel problem

Jakarta plans to make at least five million hectares (12 million acres) of former forest land available for palm oil, jatropha, sugarcane and cassava plantations in a bid to create jobs for up to three million people.

The government hopes that biofuels will supply 10 per cent of Indonesia’s transport and electricity fuel needs by 2010.
Environmentalists have applauded Jakarta’s plans for alternative energy sources but warned that palm oil was not necessarily a green answer to Indonesia’s fuel crisis.

“If the government really wants to press for biofuel, please use idle land, don’t convert natural forest,” urged Elfian Effendi from Greenomics.

Palm oil, which requires fertile land, uses valuable food-producing land, but jatropha, said Manurung, can grow on dry wasteland. Jatropha is ideal for the drought-prone regions of eastern Indonesia which struggle to grow other crops, and establishing a jatropha plantation costs just a tenth of setting up a palm oil plantation.

Although demand for biofuels is likely to soar, vegetable oils are not about to replace petrol as Indonesia’s, or the world’s, major fuel source, warns David Chang, a researcher from UOBKay Hian Securities.

Al Jazeera