Yusof Basiron

Mitigating climate change through oil palm cultivation

Oil palm requires 7-11 times less land area than soyabean, rapeseed and sunflower to produce the same amount of oil. Therefore, the use of palm oil for food and biofuel, has saved 97-159 million ha of land from being deforested for cultivation with lower yielding oil crops. This has avoided 27-45 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2-e) emissions. Oil palm also sequesters eight times more CO2 than soyabean. As a biofuel, the use of palm biodiesel results in 62-82% Life Cycle Analysis Greenhouse Gas (LCA GHG) reduction when compared with fossil fuel.