Despite adverse publicity on palm oil, the commodity has proven its efficiency as a fuel to supply heat to nearly 35,000 German homes.
A combined heat and power plant operated by Vattenhall Europe at Weigandufer, near here, has been running on natural gas, coal and a portion of palm oil supplied by Malaysia’s IOI Group refinery in Rotterdam.
“There is an estimated 40 miles of piping to various homes. The certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO) is doing a humble effort in keeping the German and European families warm at an affordable rate,” said Chief Executive Officer of Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) Tan Sri Dr Yusof Basiron.
Speaking to BERNAMA, he said, the plant could not use local seed oil as it was expensive and does not burn as fuel.
As such, palm oil clearly had all the positive attributes in being not only a renewable fuel at an affordable price but the oil could also work in any situation, whether hot or cold.
Dr Yusof said palm oil’s contribution has been tremendous in not only providing income for the farmers in Malaysia but also in providing heat to the community in German.
However, the pressures exerted by NGOs had affected European consumers perception of palm oil.
“It is unfortunate. Palm oil is a good product which provides a good service, but it was denied a fair mention.
“The irony of the matter is that, other competing products which were not certified, not sustainable and not functioning well as a fuel, did not face such problems.
“This could well suggest a business rivalry in play, with the pressure groups being funded by bigger players, who don’t want such renewable energy product to come strongly into the market.
“We don’t know the real perpetrators of the campaign. They are cashing in on the popularity of going green. And for the NGOs, their real intentions remained unknown.
“But whatever it is, they are denying producers and consumers a legitimate opportunity to flourish,” he said.
Dr Yusof said palm oil has been making huge sacrifices to the community unlike what was being portrayed by NGOs.
He said the situation could not be further jeopardised by overzealous NGOs that are looking only at deforestation aspect of the oil palm which is not substantiated.
He pointed out that deforestation was done long ago for creating agricultural land to meet developmental needs of the nation.
Malaysia had already committed itself under the Rio Summit to have over 50 per cent of its land under forest cover.
– BERNAMA
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