Neste Oil believes certification will remove obstacles to use of palm oil in bio-diesel production

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The CEO of the Finnish oil refiner Neste Oil Risto Rinne believes that certifying the production of palm oil in the future will gradually put a stop to the cutting down of rain forests to make way for palm plantations.
      According to Rinne, this is because a producer will get a better price for palm oil that is produced on a certified plantation that operates in accordance with the principles of sustained development than for oil from an uncertified farm.
      "Perhaps then the cutting down of the rain forests and the selling of precious wood while clearing space for palm oil production will not be as profitable any longer", Rinne says.
     
Neste Oil uses palm oil as raw material for bio-diesel. The company currently produces 170,000 tonnes of bio-diesel at its Porvoo refinery in Southern Finland, for which it needs in the region of 200,000 tonnes of plant and animal fats as raw material.
      The company also plans to erect another biological diesel oil refinery in Singapore by late 2010. This facility will require about a million tonnes of raw material each year. At least to begin with, the Singapore facility’s main raw material would be palm oil.
     
Greenpeace and other environmental organisations have demanded that Neste Oil stop the use of palm oil.
      According to the critics, the use of palm oil will increase the cutting down of pristine rain forests and the emissions of carbon dioxide from the swamp rain forests, as the producers aim to satisfy the increased demand for palm oil.
      "In my view, eventually such palm oil production that increases carbon dioxide emissions will be doomed", Rinne says.
     
The certification of palm oil production is carried out by an organisation called the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). The organisation consists of around 200 members, most of whom are large western palm oil users such as retail store chains, food supplies manufacturers, and oil and energy companies.
      The RSPO decides itself on the criteria for production that is in accordance with the principles of sustainable development. The determining of the criteria was completed in November and certified palm oil is expected to hit the market at the beginning of 2008.
      Environmental organisations and other experts have criticised the certification system, because examples from forestry, for one, have proved that such systems are insufficiently comprehensive and do not serve their real purpose.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Greenpeace: Neste palm oil-based biodiesel not so green (31.10.2007)
  Neste Oil to build world´s largest bio-diesel refinery in Singapore (3.12.2007)

Links:
  Biodiesel (Wikipedia)

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