SE Asia looks to palm oil for energy answers

Indonesia and Malaysia are the latest countries to invest in the biofuel trend by increasing palm oil production, but some experts believe ramping up crop output is not an acceptable means to an end.
“The biggest impediment of biofuel popularization is its higher price than conventional fuel,” wrote Tomohide Sugino, a project leader for the UN Center for Alleviation of Poverty through Secondary Crops’ Development in Asia and the Pacific, in a Jakarta Post newspaper commentary published earlier this year.

“Roughly speaking, the production cost of biofuel is twice as much as gasoline […] the forerunners who have successfully increased biofuel consumption have provided tax exemptions or subsidies to their biofuel producers.”

Dennis Avery, a senior fellow at the Washington, DC-based Hudson Institute and director for the Center for Global Food Issues, is an ardent critic of the palm oil aspirations of Indonesia and Malaysia and other efforts to supplant fossil fuels with biofuels.

Corruption among officials in those countries intent on expanding the biofuel sector – and willing to give companies the green light to clear large tracks of land to do it – is another concern expressed by biofuel critics.

“The land cost is massive and people don’t realize that land is the world’s scarcest resource,” Avery told ISN Security Watch.

He noted that increasing soil erosion and the clear-cutting of tropical forests to make room for additional crops are among the industry’s other sins, adding that palm oil production was also a direct threat to numerous species of rare and endangered animals in the region.

ISN Security Watch