Life cycle assessment of palm oil at United Plantation Berhad : Improvement options and comparison with European rapeseed oil
2010
Jannick H. Schmidt
The present study is a lift cycle assessment (LCA) of palm oil at United Plantations Berhad (UP) with focus on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The study evaluates the GHG emissions related to 1 tonne refined vegetable oil used for food purposes. The GHG emissions for palm oil from UP is 2.45 t C02-equivalents (C02e) per t refined oil.Different improvement options to reduce GHG emissions are evaluated, and the results are also compared with European rapeseed oil. The evaluation of improvement options shows that significant GHG reductions can be achieved by installing bio gas trappinginfrastructure instead of adopting the conventional palm oil mill effluent (POME) treatment in anaerobic ponds, and by avoiding cultivation on peat. The comparison of palm oil at UP and European rapeseed oil shows that palm oil performs better than rapeseed oil. The major uncertainties in the results are related to CO2 emissions from cultivation of peat, GHG emissions related to land use changes and applied emissions factors for N2O. The two first mentioned uncertainties require more research to reduce them in future results.
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