May 16, 2011 If you fuel your truck with biodiesel made from
palm oil grown on a patch of cleared rainforest, you could be
putting into the atmosphere 10 times more greenhouse gasses than
if you’d used conventional fossil fuels. It’s a scenario so ugly
that, in its worst case, it makes even diesel created from coal
(the “coal to liquids” fuel dreaded by climate campaigners the
world over) look “green.” The biggest factor determining whether
or not a biofuel ultimately leads to more greenhouse-gas
emissions than conventional fossil fuels is the type of land
used to grow it, says a new study from researchers at MIT. The
carbon released when you clear a patch of rainforest is the
reason that palm oil grown on that patch of land leads to 55
times the greenhouse-gas emissions of palm oil grown on land
that had already been cleared or was not located in a
rainforest, said the study’s lead author. The solution to this
biofuels dilemma is more research. Unlike solar and wind, it’s
truly an area in which the world is