Indonesia’s biofuel drive not fully thought through

The current craze for the breakneck development of biofuels ignores the fact that biofuels by themselves cannot fully replace fossil fuels, such as gasoline and diesel, but always have to be used as a blend (e.g. ethanol blended with gasoline or “gasohol”, or palm oil blended with diesel), and that to the extent edible products like palm oil are diverted for use as fuel, their price for human consumption may go up with corresponding adverse economic effects. What is burned as a source of energy is not as important as how efficiently it is burned since any waste heat added to the atmospheric gases is as bad as the greenhouse gases themselves.
It is only after several years of effort, coupled with financial incentives, that the developed countries have managed to achieve blends of 20-25 percent biofuel (e.g., ethanol) with conventional fuels (e.g., gasoline).

Inefficient use of even the greenest of the biofuels will mean additional waste heat in the atmosphere adding to the greenhouse effect. The editorial acknowledges that “international consumers will not touch Indonesian biofuel, however, if it is produced through environmentally unsustainable practices”.

It will thus be important to find ways of reducing the overall impact of high crude oil prices without producing adverse effects, such as unaffordable cooking oil (as a result of increased usage for biofuels), or increased emissions of hot gases. In comparison with the current blockheaded strategy of slash-and-burn replacement of forests with oil-palm plantations, several other potential approaches could achieve a much better balance between ecological impact and cost.

Jakarta Post