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Biodiesel is interesting but if you end up using palm nuts as the oil source and the producers are clear cutting forests to plan palms then the climate story ge
by Tagbert 4y ago
Biodiesel is interesting but if you end up using palm nuts as the oil source and the producers are clear cutting forests to plan palms then the climate story gets muddy.
- dieselgate 4y agoIndeed, although palm nuts/oil as the result of clear-cutting is a straw man. I do agree, however, biodiesel is quite a varied product. There could be biodiesel made from palm or beef/meat byproducts (tallow), which could in theory come from a clear-cut area. But it would likely constitute a very small volume of biodiesel (compared to soy for example [1]). Soy ain’t perfect either (gmo, mono cropping etc etc) but certainly better than petroleum. Edit/Note: I’m in the US and typically seek out data for the North American region. Maybe palm oil biodiesel is a bigger thing in other parts of the world (Africa, Europe, Asia?) - not sure. Would be intrigued if there is data supporting it either way. The US dataset below has “no data” explicitly stated for palm oils. [1]: https://www.eia.gov/biofuels/biodiesel/production/table3.pdf https://www.eia.gov/biofuels/biodiesel/production/table3.pdf