Biofuel made from palm oil is not sustainable

In the long catalogue of products of the false sustainability Palm oil-based biofuel for airplanes is also included. Presented as a product green, capable of significantly reducing CO2 emissions from flights, and decarbonising air transport in the European Union, in reality biofuel can be considered anything but greens.

Its supposed caliber as a sustainable fuel comes from the source from which it is produced: palm oil, one of the cheapest and most productive vegetable oils per hectare. It's a shame that most of the world's production comes from Indonesia and Malaysia, where to make room for plantations they are often cut down tropical forests and peatlands: So much so that the European Union has banned the use of palm oil to produce biofuels as early as 2030. But once the law is passed, the loophole is found, and as the environmental association Transport & Environment denounces, biofuels, under these conditions and despite the EU bans from 2030, risk causing even more damage than those derived from fossil fuels.

Palm oil, initially banned, is back in play, free from constraints, under the names of Pome and Pfad, two residues from the processing of palm oil, used precisely to make biofuels. For these two by-products, EU regulations are less stringent than those directly provided for palm oil, and therefore the biofuel industry is still incentivised to deforest to plant other plants from which they will not obtain any profit. palm oil, but its two by-products for jet fuel sold as sustainable. 

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