At IPS  a general news service that includes a good deal on  climate change, (*Correction 1:  earlier post erred in saying it runs mainly climate news,and there was an even bigger error as noted below) Canadian crusading journalist Stephen Leahy reports a surprise, if it’s true. But one sees in the story an element of bait and switch. It’s not enough to refute the main point, which could well be perfectly valid. But the brush is broad.

Compare the lede, “The only green in biodiesel fuel is the money producers make from it, new research has revealed,” with the followup: “Biodiesel from palm oil plantations may be the world’s dirtiest fuel – far worse than burning diesel made from oil when the entire production life cycle is considered.”

Thus the target is just one way of making biodiesel. It is a widely used and still-growing one to be sure. It would be no surprise that clearing vast natural forest tracts to grow palm oil makes biodiesel overall a product that accelerates rather than retards global warming. But the story ought to tell readers whether there are are some biodiesels that are as green as advertised. I’m thinking of the small operations that turn used cooking oil into biodiesel, but one can imagine others that pass muster on the greenhouse gas scale.

[*Correction 2: As Leahy politely notes in comments, the story does, well along but it's there, tell readers that cooking oil-derived biofuel may be a net plus in the carbon department. ]

Leahy, whose work has been posted on here several times, is among the more innovative freelancers in the struggle to get the money to keep working. Among his strategies for covering travel and other expenses is to seek donations on the web. I’ve made a small one myself to his community supported journalism venture. He uses it to do good, if clearly agenda-driven, work. Being a crusader and being honest are not incompatible.

[*Correction 2 Cont'd: Scratch this whole graf. I'll still maintain Leahy's lede is too strong, but he has the caveats explicitly] He already did what I asked But one more paragraph in this story would be welcome, one that might reassure the public-spirited lady driving her old Mercedes diesel around the streets of Cambridge or Berkeley that she is doing the world a favor when fueling up (for high cost) at a little neighborhood biodiesel outlet.

Other Biodiesel News (some may enforce Leahy’s angle):

• Reuters – Michael Hogan: Green fuel taxes choking German biodiesel growth ;
• Des Moines Register – Dan Piller: Fragile future for biofuel industry foretold ; This is off topic, but a prime source here is named Joe Jobe. He is executive officer of the National Biodiesel Board in Missouri. I usually have the discipline to suppress puns, and also making much of people whose names seem right for the job. Not this time. Jojoba plants, full of wax and natural oil, were for a while the hottest-promoted feedstock for biodiesel. If I were a reporter, I’d ask about that mellifluous name of his. Maybe it’s his given name, or not. Apt for sure.
• Bikya Masr (Egypt independent news) Sharifa Ghanem: Biodiesel buses on the move in UAE ; A little hunting around reveals that the supplier, Lootah Biofuels, says it makes it from used cooking oil. It doesn’t say if it is palm oil, which seems unlikely. The problem, one gathers from Leahy’s story, is palm oil produced for direct conversion to biodiesel.
• Forbes – James Glassman: Liberate Biofuels From Abroad ;He cites Elisabeth Rosenthal of the NYTimes and quotes a five-year-old article of hers, quite badly out of contest, to build enthusiasm for import to the US of exactly the palm oil-based biofuel that energizes Leahy’s report. The headline on Rosenthal’s story (to which Glassman links): Once a Dream Fuel, Palm Oil May Be an Eco-Nightmare. Had any editor at Forbes read Rosenthal’s story, he or she would have done well to tell Mr. Glassman he may not cite it as ammo for his argument. Glassman, one notes, is a free-market crusader and head of the George W. Bush Institute, at the library of the same eponym at Southern Methodist University.
• Malaysia Star – Hanim Adnan: Cries of EU biofuel discrimination grow louder ; This one was in he paper yesterday. Ms. Adnan is quite the fan of her nation’s palm oil – here‘s what she wrote in October.

Grist for the Mill: US Dept. of Energy Biodiesel Production page. Main reference is to conversion of vegetable and animal fats; doesn’t mention palm oil. Implies production in US relies on used and locally-produced feed stock materials.

- Charlie Petit

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