Rain Forest for Biodiesel?
November 2, 2007
by Guido Reinhardt, Nils Rettenmaier, Sven Gärtner, ifeu-Institut für Energie- und Umweltforschung Heidelberg GmbH (Chapter 2 and 4) Andreas Pastowski, Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie GmbH (Chapter 3) (WWF Germany) The study concludes that the use of tropical fallow land for planting oil palm is clearly more effective in terms of CO2 savings than clearing of natural forests. The results are not as unequivocal when converting other plantations into oil palm plantations as it depends on the preceding crop. When plantations of other crops are converted into palm oil plantations, it means the products traded on the world market, for eg. natural rubber, will no longer be available and have therefore to be substituted by alternatives such as synthetic rubber. All this needs to be considered. Download Study