Fueling forest for food

October 17th, 2011 | Posted by iip in Forest - (0 Comments)

Debating biofuel as promising commodity has been months. Some scientits argued that biofuel is not eco-friendly as alternative fuel. Inline with this, recent news of BBC talks about doubt of leaders on biofuel development.

The leaders are Bolivian President Evo Morales and President Alan Garcia of Peru. They warned biofuel development could harmed poor people. In the other hand, UK Prime Minister said that “UK should be more selective in our support for biofuel”

Biofuel development threats forest in tropical area, such Indonesia. Studies link oil palm plantation expansion with deforestation. In fact, it happened in Sumatra and Kalimantan mineral soil, as well as the peat soil. However, producing biodiesel from unsustainable oil palm plantation is unfavorable. (more…)

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Certified palm oil from smallholders

October 16th, 2011 | Posted by iip in Business - (0 Comments)

Smallholder is the important player in Indonesian palm oil business. They contributed significant raw materials for the palm oil processing owned by large scale companies. Low productivity, managing small lands and poor planting materials are common characteristics found in the practices of Indonesian oil palm smallholders.

Smallholder in South Sumatra could be exception as they assisted by the Cargill, a giant multinational company work on agriculture products. Cargill’s smallholders certified their palm oil they produced under RSPO standards.  The certification leads to the premium as they received recently.

How much they received?

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Advanced biofuel technologies for large scale fuel production

October 15th, 2011 | Posted by iip in Energy - (1 Comments)

Technically, it would be possible to produce a large portion biofuel for transportation fuels using advanced biofuel technologies, suggested a review study on the current status of several advanced biofuel technologies.

The study reviews specifically advanced biofuel technology that can be grown using a small portion of the worlds land area such microalgae. Another advanced biofeul technology is grownable on arable landswithout affecting food supply or agricultural residues.

If  advanced biofuel technologies can produce large portion of transportation fuel, are there any barriers have been recognized?

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