Kenny's Nature and Environmental Blog: Palm Oil

I'm no tree hugger. Tree huggers are loonies who live in trees to keep the trees from being cut down. I am a realist. The real truth is that corporate greed around the world is wiping out rain forests. The real thing is, the low lands of Indonesia are being stripped of invaluable rain forests faster than most of us understand. Why? So we can plant for palm oil harvesting.

In my last blog, I extolled the virtues of Jatropha Curcas as a bio fuel. It doesn't require fertile land for growth- Grow it in the desert, on rocky hills or even salty plains with adequate drainage. Temperature requirements for Jatropha Curcas are similar for corn. Grow it like you know it.

Take a moment to watch this video. It's only a couple of minutes long.

That video targets Dove, and I hope it has an effect on Dove, but refusing to buy Dove products is only the tip of the iceberg. Palm oil is also in many food products. You use it in cosmetics, chocolate, condiments, chips, etc. Also, palm plantations employ whole societies in Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Benin, Kenya, Colombia.

Are there less fertile places outside of the rain forests where these people can plant Jatropha Curcas? In some case "yes," and others "no."

I previously mentioned that Jatropha Curcas produced like 500% more oil than corn. However, this is not a fair comparison. We use corn to produce bio ethanol. We use bio oils (Jatropha Curcas) to produce bio diesel. Studies are forthcoming that compare other bio ethanol sources to the leading sources of bio ethanol corn and sugarcane. Switchgrass is a strong contender as a replacement for corn and sugarcane as a bio ethanol.

Let's take a look at bio sources of oil ranked by gallons per acre (see the chart on the right). Keep in mind that there is a tremendous amount of variability in these numbers. For example, Jatropha Curcas produces more seeds in its third year than second. The chart is just to give you a general idea of potentials. Most of the numbers came from http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html.

You can see that palm oil is at the top. Some would argue that Jatropha Curcas will eventually be able to double the oil per acre over palm oil. Time will tell. In the mean time, we must be careful not to encourage palm oil's use as a bio fuel. Anything we can do to discourage the destruction of rain forests is a plus. If you don't think it matters, I promise you- It matters more to you than you know.

One problem of both bio ethanol and bio diesel is that it will require an enormous amount of land to produce enough bio fuel to replace petroleum. Even if we figure out a way to meet demand for this decade, world population is increasing faster than we can keep up. In 1802, we had 1 billion people on the planet. Now, we have 6.5 billion. We'll have 7 billion people by 2011. Population is increasing by 211,090 people per day (according to CIA world facts).

We need a bio fuel that can do better than 1000 gallons per acre. We need something that can produce 10,000 to 50,000 gallons of oil per acre.

Look no further than your fish tank. I'm talking about algae. We researched it years ago, but someone said it was too expensive to go from harvested oil to usable fuel. That was back when crude oil was $20 a barrel. I'm guessing that with improved technology and the economies of post-$100 barrel oil, things have changed.

When we talk about how many gallons of oil per acre that can be produced, we normally think about a vertical crop that covers an acre. This is not the case with algae. It can be grown in multiple stacks of vertical sheets. In the future, you could have a 10-story building producing 30,000 gallons of oil per story per year (or more). It's the new soylent green without the mess of people. The water will be recyclable and algae eats CO2, cutting green house gas. Maybe, we'll grow our own fuel in our backyards.

We've already identified algae strains that produce best. Once we master conversion costs from raw oil to fuel, we'll never fight another war over crude oil again. Doesn't that sound nice?

Take a look at these videos on the process.