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Biodiesel squeezes palm supply

cacruden

cacruden

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Biodiesel squeezes palm supply

By Yuthana Praiwan and Phusadee Arunmas (bangkokpost.com)

Palm oil prices have jumped sharply in recent months, leading authorities to consider a ban on exports. Palm oil is a raw material for cooking oil, the food industry and as an alternative fuel.

A Commerce Ministry panel that monitors palm oil prices yesterday recommended that the government import 30,000 tonnes of crude olein, the liquid component of palm kernel oil, to ease supply shortages. The proposal will be considered today by the Edible Oil Policy Board, chaired by Commerce Minister Krirk-krai Jirapaet.

But the Palm Oil and Oil Palm Association and the Palm Oil Crushing Mill Association have come out against the proposal as doing little to address current problems.

The mandatory introduction of biodiesel next month has had little impact on crude palm oil supplies, insists Chaiwat Churit, a senior executive vice-president of PTT Plc. The Energy Ministry plans to make B2 biodiesel, a blend of 2% biofuel and diesel, the universal standard starting from Feb 2.

Mr Chaiwat said the introduction of biodiesel would have only a minor impact on the palm oil market.

Thavee Srisukon, the president of the Palm Oil and Oil Palm Association, said crude olein in Malaysia was now quoted at 35 baht per kilogramme. After transport costs, insurance and tariffs are included, import prices differed little from domestic prices, which in any case had moved upward in line with global prices.

One industry executive suggested that supply constraints were the fault of the Commerce Ministry itself, which should have anticipated the price impact of rising demand for biofuel production and exports.

Crude palm oil reserves last week fell to 86,000 tonnes, down from 98,000 in December and 150,000 last June.

Thailand produces around 1.4 million tonnes of crude palm oil each year, of which 800,000 to 850,000 tonnes go to cooking oil production and 500,000 for export.

But the introduction of B2 biodiesel is expected to require 350,000 tonnes of crude palm oil each year, or the equivalent of 1.2 million litres of B100 100% biofuel per day.

Charnchit Nawongsri, the general manager of Asian Palm Oil Co, said palm oil prices should ease over the next few weeks with the start of the new harvest season.

He cautioned that any move to import palm oil could affect local farmers if supply outstrips demand.

Mr Chaiwat of PTT said the authorities should have foreseen the impact the introduction of B2 would have on the market.

PTT, Bangchak Petroleum and the Energy Ministry had given the Commerce Ministry six months' advance notice about the introduction of B2 in the market, he said, including cautions that close monitoring of domestic supply would be needed to ensure sufficient output.

Manoon Siriwan, a local energy analyst, said that on the surface, crude palm oil supplies should be sufficient to meet demand, even with the introduction of biodiesel. B100 biofuel requires glycerol, a byproduct from the refining process to produce palm cooking oil.

Cooking oil requires highly pure crude palm oil as its raw material.

Of the nine biofuel producers in Thailand, only Thai Oleochemicals, a unit of PTT Chemical, is able to refine biofuel from crude palm oil. The company is expected to start commercial operations of B100 production within the next six months.

"All the remaining producers depend on glycerol, which requires less refinery investment than if you use pure palm oil as a feedstock," said a senior Energy Ministry official.

"As a result, biofuel production isn't really affecting crude palm oil stocks, since eight of the nine refineries use glycerol, not palm oil."
 
I really think we should reconsider the use of food oils for biodiesel fuels. I originally thought it was a good idea, but the inflating of basic food products is not a good idea.
 
No?

It has the potential to raise incomes in developing nations. Believe it or not, but food costs have risen very slowly of late (at least in NA), and besides, the value of most food products has little to do with the cost of the underlying commodity.
 
afransen said:
No?

It has the potential to raise incomes in developing nations. Believe it or not, but food costs have risen very slowly of late (at least in NA), and besides, the value of most food products has little to do with the cost of the underlying commodity.
Click to expand...

The problem is that it is raising the income generated on a small sector of the farming industry - the part that is needed for staples or to cook. You are taking a necessary food commodity and turning it into an energy commodity. Rising farm prices/income (overall) would be good - since the income is generally a fraction of the resale price. I read a story early that prices paid to farmers (general) were down.
 
Actually noticed at the store today that the cooking oil purchases are limited to three bottles (of any size) - by order of the Thai government. Trying to avoid too many problems due to a shortage.
 
From guardian.co.uk.

Monday January 14 2008

EU to reconsider biofuels targets
Jessica Aldred and agencies


The EU is to re-examine its policy on biofuels after admitting that the environmental and social impact of producing the crops may be greater than originally thought, it emerged today.

The European commission's environment minister, Stavros Dimas, admitted that the EU did not foresee the problems that would be raised by its policy of getting 10% of Europe's road fuels from plants by 2020.

He said the environmental impact and the effect on poor communities of boosting biofuel production would be greater than Brussels had originally thought.

The acknowledgement, in an interview for the BBC, follows a report published in the journal Science last week which warned that biofuels made from corn, sugar cane and soy could have a greater environmental impact than burning fossil fuels.

The research, from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, found that although the fuels themselves emitted fewer greenhouse gases, they all had higher costs in terms of biodiversity loss and destruction of farmland.

"Regardless of how effective sugar cane is for producing ethanol, its benefits quickly diminish if carbon-rich tropical forests are being razed to make the sugar cane fields, thereby causing vast greenhouse-gas emission increases," the report's authors, Jörn Scharlemann and William Laurance, wrote.

Another scientific study published last August also warned that the target of getting 10% of petrol and diesel needs from renewable sources by 2020 was less effective in curbing carbon emissions than a programme of restoring forests and protection plant habitats.

Dimas said today that there had been "a lot of enthusiasm" for the biofuels option a year and a half ago as a means of meeting overall targets in cutting emissions from vehicles.

That enthusiasm had "gone down" because of revelations that the environmental and social problems were greater than thought.

"We have seen that the environmental problems caused by biofuels and also the social problems are bigger than we thought they were," he told the BBC.

Dimas said the commission would now have to "move carefully" on the issue of biofuels, adding: "We have to have criteria for sustainability, including social and environmental issues, because there are some benefits from biofuels."

One of the criteria in pushing biofuels was that the policy had to be "sustainable" - meaning that harnessing biofuels should not mean clearing existing forest land.

If the necessary sustainability could not be achieved, said Dimas, the EU targets would not be met.

Greenpeace's executive director, John Sauven, said: "The dangers of mass biofuel production need to be taken seriously because as things stand biofuels could be worse than useless at combating climate change.

"But UK government targets mean that soon motorists will be forced to pump these fuels into their tanks, with no way of knowing where they're coming from. We need to be sure that when we fill up we are not trashing the world's rainforests. A better, quicker solution would be to make our cars far more fuel efficient."

The earlier study, published in Science last August, warned that the European biofuels policy was a "mistake".

It compared the relative environmental benefits of growing crops on arable land to produce biofuels, or replanting the same land with trees, and found that the quantity of CO2 absorbed by forests over 30 years would be "considerably greater" than the emissions avoided by using biofuels.

The extent of the benefits of biofuels will be assessed in a review being published today by the Royal Society. The report is expected to urge EU governments to ensure that they only endorse a biofuels policy which can be proven to cut carbon emissions.
 
another environmental initiative turned disaster is the removal of lead solder from electronic devices.

benefits of lead:

- melts at a lower temperature therefore uses less energy during production and exposes circuitry less damage from heat. lead is flexible & soft and jolts to electronics are more forgiving. lead doesn't grow tin whiskers which short out circuits reducing their lifespan. lead is easily recycled. electronics with lead solder last longer which means less junk at the landfill.


consequences of removing lead:

-alloys of tin & silver will have to be used to solder electronics. these require a higher melting temperature which exposes electronics to greater heat damage reducing the lifespan of the product. silver mining is one of the most destructive mining processes with the use of large amounts of cyanide. solder alloys are extremely difficult to recycle. alloy solders are less flexible and hard which means that jolts are likely to cause damage to solder joints. tin whiskers will grow on devices and cause them to short out circuits. the lifespan of electronics devices will be reduced and there will be more junk at the landfills.
 
bump

It's interesting that the UN is now calling for a halt to biofuels investment. In the 2007 release of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC), the chapter covering mitigation of greenhouse gases promoted biofuels as one strong potential replacement for petroleum sources. Note how the IPCC goes unnamed.

It would appear that once again, UN departments are working at cross-purposes. Critics of biofuels predicted long ago that treating plants as fuel sources would only result in them being pegged to pricing of that market.

-----------------------------------------------------

UN urges biofuel investment halt


The UN's new top adviser on food has urged a freeze on biofuel investment, saying the blind pursuit of the policy is "irresponsible".

Olivier de Schutter also wants curbs on investors whose speculation is, he says, driving food prices higher.

UN officials liken the rise in food prices to a silent tsunami, threatening 100 million of the world's poorest.

The use of food crops for alternative sources of energy like ethanol is one factor behind the price hike.

Mr de Schutter did not go quite as far as his predecessor in the job, Jean Ziegler, the BBC's Laura Trevelyan reports from New York.

Mr Ziegler had condemned biofuels as a "crime against humanity" and called for an immediate ban on their use.

'Predictable' crisis

But the new special rapporteur on the right to food did insist the American and European goals for biofuel production were unrealistic.

"The ambitious goals for biofuel production set by the United States and the European Union are irresponsible," he said in an interview for France's Le Monde newspaper.

"I am calling for a freeze on all investment in this sector."
The biofuel rush was, he argued, a "scandal that only serves the interests of a tiny lobby".

Calling for a special session of the UN Human Rights Council to discuss the food crisis, Mr de Schutter also said he wanted to find ways to limit the impact of speculative investments in food commodities like wheat, which had further driven up prices.

And the rapporteur, a Belgian professor of international law, said it was "unforgivable" that the international community had failed to anticipate the riots sparked last month by soaring food prices.

"Nothing was done to prevent speculation in raw materials, though it was predictable investors would turn to these markets following the stock market slowdown," the UN official said.

"We are paying for 20 years of mistakes."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7381392.stm
 
foodstuffs such as staple crops shouldn't be used for biofuels. they should be using biowaste for the production of fuel and that is only if it is an efficient process which current biofuel production isn't.

i heard that if even all the farmland in the US was used to grow crops for biofuels, it would only account for a dent of a few percent reduction in the use of fossil fuels in the US. is this true?
 
There was a joint report put out by the U.S. Departments of Energy and Agriculture that examined the fuel potential derived from all available sources of biowaste. In theory, harnessing this waste for fuel, along with the cultivation of switchgrass, and their subsequent conversion to ethanol, could account for about a third to half of all present-day automobile fuel demands.

Problems arise from a number of sources. First, can such a massive acquisition of biowaste actually be achieved so as to meet the industrial-level demands for ethanol production? What are the potential impacts of removing this level of biowaste from the environment? What are the economic impacts of converting biowaste into a commodity for fuel production? What would be the economic impact on agricultural production when considering the potential mass cultivation of switchgrass for ethanol production?

The large-scale use of agricultural products for ethanol or biodiesel still leave many unanswered questions.
 
Proponents of biofuels don't often suggest that all present consumption of gasoline/diesel can be replaced by naturally sourced alternatives. They can and probably will form part of the solution.

In light of increased food prices, it would certainly seem prudent to at least remove subsidies for new food-based biofuel production. I don't, however, think it's all that clear that the increase in biofuel production has caused the major part of food price increases in the past few years.
 
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