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“Clean power” in Germany destroys jungle in Southeast Asia
Diet Simon - 15.03.2007 12:05
While jungle is destroyed on a large scale in Southeast Asia for palm oil plantations, nearly all larger German heat and power co-generation stations have switched from locally produced rapeseed oil to imported palm oil because it’s cheaper.
This has been researched by Bavarian television for its “report München” programme aired nationally.
That makes the climate-friendly co-generation plants, which produce both power and heating, climate killers.
Jungle is being burnt down in Indonesia and Malaysia to be replaced with oil palms.
Satellite images taken of Sarawak in 1990 still show green rainforest. Eleven years later there are bare areas and plantations. Smoke from the vast fires in Indonesia has been carried as far as Africa.
Professor Florian Siegert of Munich University makes a damning indictment. “We were able to prove that the making of these plantations and the burning of the rain forests and peat areas emits many thousands of times as much CO2 as we then are able to prevent by using palm oil. And that is a disastrous balance for the climate.”
Axel Friedrich at the German Environment Agency notes that co-generation plants as such are more environment-friendly than normal power stations because the heat normally wasted when power is generated is also used.
“But if I use palm oil in this application I destroy part of this advantage because I’m destroying jungle.”
report München accessed an unpublished study by the Leipzig based Institute for Energy and Environment stating that German co-generation plants will just this year produce at least 1.3 billion kilowatt-hours of power from palm oil.
That’s equivalent, for example, to the entire German solar power output in 2005.
What’s more, the operators of palm oil power stations receive subsidies. They will get some 200 million euros this year from a levy collected under the Renewable Energy Promotion Act, the legislation for German alternative energies. It will go onto power consumers’ bills.
A paradoxical law in this case: just like home-grown rape, oil palms are treated as re-growing plants from agricultural operations – even though these operations are in Southeast Asia.
The TV reporters confronted the German environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, with their findings.
He even sees the turnaround to more renewable energies jeopardised by the German palm oil problem.
“I find that very worrying because everyone using clean power promoted by the act thinks they’re doing something good, and if they’ve done that in part by destroying rain forest then we’re close to discrediting the sense of this renewables act in public awareness.”
The City Works Schwäbisch Hall burns 7,500 tonnes of palm oil a year in a five-megawatt co-generation plant.
The CEO, Johannes van Bergen, justifies it by arguing that rape oil had become too dear. Moreover, he says, he gets his oil only from old plantations in Malaysia. And his supplier was a member of the so-called “Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil”.
But that is as yet only a well-meaning working group without genuine controls. So could the power station chief check on the sustainability of the oil he burns? he was asked.
“I’m using a German law. As a small power works do I now have to do international research to rule out that a rain forest is cut down somewhere?
“Let me pass that back to you: why didn’t our government, when it was making this law, see to it that a corresponding certification of these oils was written into the law?”
Although there is no certification of sustainably produced palm oil yet, those trading in it already like citing it as justification.
The TV reporters found out that Urpower, the operator of a large co-generation plant in Saxony, buys palm oil on the world market.
Replying in writing to questions, the firm cited its membership of the round table and claimed it uses only vegetable oil “verified” by the World Wildlife Fund.
WWF told the reporters there’s “no palm oil on the market yet” meeting the round table criteria.
Axel Friedrich of the environment agency concurs that there is no system for certifying palm oil.
“Anyone who claims there is, is deliberately or unknowingly telling a lie. There is no system for the certification of palm oil. Moves are afoot to put such things in place but none exists.
“Anyone claiming he’s bought palm oil from an existing old plantation, takes palm oil out of the system, of course, and so increases the pressure to start new palm oil plantations at the expense of the jungle.”
A way out would be a certification system for provable sustainable palm oil plantations set up, for example, on already fallow land. But when will the overdue certification come?
“We want to have suggestions worked out by the middle of the year,” says the environment minister. “That can’t happen from one day to the next. It’s often wished that one could just throw a lever.
“But I’m telling you that you’re talking to countries that have a completely different take on this to ours. Not a good answer, but at least an honest one.”
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| Lees meer over: natuur, dier en mens | | aanvullingen | | Australian Greenies pushed for palm oil | http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/node/50359 - 17.03.2007 01:17
Australian Greenies pushed for palm oil for 20 years
Indonesian plantations are so damaging that after a 25-year harvest, oil- palm lands are often abandoned for scrubland. Soils are so leached of nutrients, especially in acidic environments, that few other plants will grow, leaving the area essentially devoid of vegetation other than weedy grasses which serve as tinder for wildfires.
For these reasons, the scientific community is deeply concerned by a proposal by the Indonesian government to turn vast areas of Borneo’s remote and biodiverse rainforests into oil-palm plantations.
 http://www.borneo-palm-seed.com/html/home.htm
http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0425-oil_palm.html
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 2007/03/15 - 11:55pm.
Indonesian plantations are so damaging that after a 25-year harvest, oil- palm lands are often abandoned for scrubland. Soils are so leached of nutrients, especially in acidic environments, that few other plants will grow, leaving the area essentially devoid of vegetation other than weedy grasses which serve as tinder for wildfires.
For these reasons, the scientific community is deeply concerned by a proposal by the Indonesian government to turn vast areas of Borneo’s remote and biodiverse rainforests into oil-palm plantations.
http://www.borneo-palm-seed.com/html/home.htm
http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0425-oil_palm.html
| | Gabriel und der Palmöl-Skandal | Werner Paczian - 17.03.2007 13:25
Laut Umweltbundesamt ist Strom aus Palmöl pure Urwaldvernichtung und wird trotzdem subventioniert.
HAMBURG – Die Umweltorganisation Rettet den Regenwald (RdR) fordert von Bundesumweltminister Sigmar Gabriel, den starken Worten zur Stromerzeugung aus Palmöl endlich Taten folgen zu lassen und Strom aus Palmöl nicht länger über das „Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz“ (EEG) zu subventionieren. Gabriel hatte vor wenigen Tagen öffentlich erklärt: „Jeder der EEG-Strom benutzt, denkt er tut was gutes, und wenn er das zum Teil durch die Zerstörung des Regenwaldes gemacht hat, dann sind wir kurz davor, den Sinn dieses Gesetzes zu diskreditieren.“
Nach einer Studie des Leipziger Instituts für Energetik und Umwelt erzeugen deutscheBlockheizkraftwerke allein in 2007 mindestens 1,3 Milliarden Kilowattstunden Strom aus Palmöl. Dafür erhalten die Kraftwerksbetreiber rund 200 Millionen Euro Zuschüsse über das EEG, die auf die Stromrechnung aller Haushalte umgelegt werden.
„Der Bioenergie-Boom zerstört Regenwälder, heizt das Klima an, vertreibt Kleinbauern und wird immer stärker eine Konkurrenz zur Lebensmittelproduktion“, erklärte der RdR-Vorsitzende Reinhard Behrend. „Jede Tonne Palmöl, die in Deutschland zur Energieproduktion eingesetzt wird, führt vor allem in Südostasien zu immer neuer Waldvernichtung.“
Jüngstes Beispiel ist die Zerstörung von 1000 Hektar Mangrovenwald für zwei neue Palmöl-Plantagen im malaysischen Bundesstaat Sabah auf der Insel Borneo. Mangrovenwälder gehören zu den artenreichsten und produktivsten Feuchtgebieten der Erde und stellen eine wichtige Ressourcenquelle für die lokale Bevölkerung dar. Als Brutstätte für viele Krebstiere und Fische sichern die Küstenwälder die Ernährung der Menschen.Die malaysische Regierung hat die geplante Umwandlung von 1000 Hektar Mangroven in Palmöl-Plantagen auf Sabah damit begründet, die Fläche liege nahe zu einem Hafen. Die industrielle Entwicklung der Mangrovenfläche sei nötig, um die Nachfrage der Palmöl-Industrie auf Sabah zu decken.
Professor Florian Siegert von der Uni München hat anhand von Satellitenaufnahmen die massive Regenwaldzerstörung in Malaysia und Indonesien für Palmöl nachgewiesen. Fast überall dort, wo die Bilder seit 1990 Waldbrände dokumentiert haben, stehen heute Palmöl-Plantagen. “Wir konnten nachweisen, dass durch das Anlegen dieser Plantagen und das Abbrennen der Regenwälder und Torfgebiete ein viel tausendfaches an CO2 freigesetzt wird als das, was wir hier dann in der Folge durch Palmölverbrauch einsparen können. Und damit ist die Klimabilanz von Palmöl desaströs“, so der Wissenschaftler.
Auch Axel Friedrich vom Umweltbundesamt kommt zu einem vernichtenden Urteil: „Blockheizkraftwerke als solches sind umweltfreundlicher als normale Kraftwerke, weil ichgleichzeitig die Wärme mit nutze und Strom generiere. Aber wenn ich an der Stelle Palmöl einsetzte, dann vernichte ich einen großen Teil dieses Vorteils, weil ich an der Stelle Urwald vernichte.“
 NIXSPAM.info@regenwald.org http://www.regenwald.org/pressemitteilungen.php
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