GREEN SOLUTION

NESTE OIL CLAIMS WORLD LEADERSHIP IN BIOFUELS FROM WASTE, RESIDUE

Over the past few years, Neste Oil has become the world’s largest producer of renewable fuels from waste and residues. In 2014, Neste Oil produced nearly 1.3 million tons (more than 420 million gallons) of renewable fuel from waste and residues. In practical terms, this is enough to power for two years all the 650,000 diesel-powered passenger cars in Finland with renewable NEXBTL diesel manufactured from waste and residues.

“We can be really proud that we have succeeded in increasing our use of waste and residue-based feedstocks in the production of renewable NEXBTL fuels to such a significant extent,” says Kaisa Hietala, executive vice president of Neste Oil’s renewable products business area. “Thanks to this, Neste Oil has in just a few years become the world’s largest circular economy enterprise in the biofuels sector. The production of fuels from waste-based feedstock is resource-efficient, and our aim is to have the capability to use 100 percent

waste and residues by 2017. We are constantly searching for new wastebased raw materials of increasingly poorer quality, and use the majority of our €40 million R&D expenditure for raw material research.”

Examples of Neste Oil’s waste and residue-based raw materials include animal and fish fats, used cooking oil and various residues generated during vegetable oil refining, such as palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) and technical corn oil. These raw materials accounted for 62 percent of Neste Oil’s renewable inputs in 2014 (52 percent in 2013, 35 percent in 2012).

Additionally, Neste Oil manufactures renewable products from vegetable oils, mainly from crude palm oil. Its proportion of the total feedstock usage has decreased markedly over the past few years and currently stands at 38 percent (47 percent in 2013, 65 percent in 2012). In all, Neste Oil is already able to produce renewable diesel from more than 10 different raw materials, and the total amount of renewal diesel produced by Neste Oil in 2014 would suffice to power 2.8 million passenger cars for one year.

All of the company’s renewable raw materials are sustainably produced and comply with both the requirements set out by legislation and the company’s own stringent sustainability criteria. With regard to crude palm oil, Neste Oil only uses certified feedstock.

Neste Oil produces renewable products based on its proprietary NEXBTL technology in its refineries located in Finland, the Netherlands and Singapore. With its annual capacity of 2 million tons, the company is the world’s largest producer of renewable diesel. The goal is to increase annual capacity to 2.6 million tons without making any major additional investments. Additionally, the NEXBTL product range will expand to cover entirely new applications outside traffic fuels, such as the chemical industry.

SCIENTISTS SAY THAT “OIL PALM PLANTATIONS HOVER WATER QUALITY”

The clearing of tropical forests to plant oil palm trees releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas fueling climate change. Converting diverse forest ecosystems to these single-crop “monocultures” degrades or destroys wildlife habitat. Oil palm plantations also have been associated with dangerous and abusive conditions for laborers.

Significantly eroded water quality now joins the list of risks associated with oil palm cultivation, according to new research co-authored by researchers from Stanford University and the University of Minnesota, who warn of threats to freshwater streams that millions ofpeople depend on for drinking water, food and livelihoods. The new study in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences contains surprising findings about the intensity and persistence of these impacts, even in areas fully forested with

mature oil palm trees.

Land clearing, plantation management (including fertilizer and pesticide application) and processing of oil palm fruits to make crude palm oil can all send sediment, nutrients and other harmful substances into streams that run through plantations. Vegetation removal along stream banks destroys plant life that stream organisms depend on for sustenance and shade.

“Although we previously documented carbon emissions from land use conversion to oil palm, we were stunned by how these oil palm plantations profoundly alter freshwater ecosystems for decades,” said study co-author and team leader Lisa M. Curran, a professor of ecological anthropology at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Palm Oil Epicenter

Indonesia produces almost half of the world’s palm oil. Home to the world’s third-largest tropical forest, the country is also one of the principal emitters of greenhouse gases, due to the rapid conversion of carbon-rich forests and peatlands to other uses.

From 2000 to 2013, Indonesia’s land used for oil palm cultivation more than tripled. About 35 percent of Indonesian Borneo’s unprotected lowlands may be cleared for oil palm in coming years, according to previous research by Curran and the study’s lead author, Kimberly Carlson, a former Stanford graduate student who is now a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment.

Curran, Carlson and their colleagues focused on small streams flowing through oil palm plantations, smallholder agriculture and forests in and around Gunung Palung National Park, a federally protected area that Curran was instrumental in establishing in 1990. They found that water temperatures in streams draining recently cleared plantations were almost 4 degrees Celsius (more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than forest streams. Sediment concentrations were up to 550 times greater. They also recorded a spike in stream metabolism — the rate at which a stream consumes oxygen and an important measure of a stream’s health — during a drought.

Possible Solutions

The impact of these land use changes on fisheries, coastal zones and coral reefs — potentially many miles downstream — remains unclear because this study is one of the first to examine the oil palm’s effects on freshwater ecosystems. “Local communities are deeply concerned about their freshwater sources. Yet the long-term impact of oil palm plantations on freshwater streams has been completely overlooked until now,” Curran said. “We hope this work will highlight these issues and bring a voice to rural communities’ concerns that directly affect their livelihoods.”

Potential management solutions, according to Carlson and Curran, include maintaining natural vegetative cover next to streams and designing oil palm plantations so that dense road networks do not intersect directly with waterways. These kinds of improved practices are being pioneered by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and other organizations that certify palm oil production as sustainable. Yet, Carlson said, “Our findings suggest that converting logged forests and diverse smallholder agricultural lands to oil palm plantations may be almost as harmful to stream ecosystems as clearing intact forests.” Very few protections for such non-intact forest ecosystems exist.

According to Curran, extensive land conversion to oil palm plantations could lead to a “perfect storm” combining the crop’s environmental effects with those from a massive El Niño-associated drought. (One is predicted this fall.) “This could cause collapse of freshwater ecosystems and significant social and economic hardships in a region,” Curran said.

Source: Zine Report