Measured greenhouse gas budgets challenge emission savings from palm-oil biodiesel
- 1University of Göttingen, Department of Crop Sciences, Division Agronomy, Göttingen, Germany (ana.meijideorive@uni-goettingen.de)
- 2Technical University of Munich, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Systems, Munich, Germany
- 3Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC), Ecological Systems Laboratory (ECOS), Station 2, Lausanne, Switzerland.
- 4University of Göttingen, Tropical Silviculture and Forest Ecology, Göttingen, Germany
- 5University of Göttingen, Soil Science of Tropical and Subtropical Ecosystems, Göttingen, Germany
- 6University of Göttingen, Bioclimatology, Göttingen, Germany
- 7University of Tadulako, Fakultas Pertanian, Palu, Indonesia
- 8IPB University, Department of Geophysics and Meteorology, Bogor, Indonesia
The potential of palm-oil biodiesel to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to fossil fuels is increasingly questioned. So far, no measurement-based ecosystem GHG budgets were available, and plantation age was ignored in Life Cycle Analyses (LCA). We conducted LCA based on measured CO2, CH4 and N2O fluxes in young and mature Indonesian oil palm plantations. CO2 dominated the on-site GHG budgets in both the young and mature plantations. The young plantation was a carbon source (1012 ± 51 gC m-2 yr-1), while the mature plantation was a carbon sink (-754 ± 38 gC m-2 yr-1). LCA considering the measured fluxes showed higher GHG emissions for palm-oil biodiesel than traditional LCA assuming carbon neutrality. Plantation rotation-cycle extension and earlier-yielding varieties potentially decrease GHG emissions. Due to the high emissions associated with forest conversion to oil palm, our results indicate that no emission savings are achieved from biodiesel from first rotation-cycle oil palm plantations. Only biodiesel from second rotation-cycle plantations or plantations established on degraded land has the potential for pronounced GHG emission savings.
How to cite: Meijide, A., de la Rúa, C., Guillaume, T., Röll, A., Hassler, E., Steigler, C., Tjoa, A., June, T., Corre, M. D., Veldkamp, E., and Knohl, A.: Measured greenhouse gas budgets challenge emission savings from palm-oil biodiesel, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-11500, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-11500, 2020
