Comparison of Emission And Energy For Biodiesel Production From Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis) And Jatropha Curcas (Jatropha curcas L.) Based On Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in Indonesia

Abstract

Energy sector plays an important role for Indonesia in achieving its economic development goal. Indonesia is still heavily dependent on fossil based energy, which is accounted for more than 90% of its energy mix (including oil, gas and coal). Biodiesel is one of the biofuel being developed and used intensively in Indonesia. Biodiesel can be produced from various oil borne plants, such as palm oil, jatropha curcas, rapeseed, soybean, etc. The USA produced their biodiesel from soybean, Euoropean countries from rapeseed, while Indonesia mainly from palm oil. Currently, environmental consideration becomes the most important issue in biodiesel production. Even though the source of the energy is considered as carbon neutral, the production path can emit various environmentally hazardous gasses. European and American countries claim that production of biodiesel from palm oil contributes carbon emission to atmosphere along its production path. Furthermore, US EPA-NODA and EU RED stated that palm oil based biodiesel can only reduce emission of GWP by 17% and 19% compared to fossil-fuel based. Considering that the minimum requirement is 20% for US and 35% for EU, CPO from Indonesia experiences difficulties to enter the global market. Scientific approach should be undertaken by Indonesia to address this issue. However nowadays we only still have few numbers of international scientific publications regarding the environmental aspect of biodiesel production. Appropriate method to analyze aforementioned problems is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) which complies with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). This study is aimed to compare life cycle assessment of biodiesel production from oil palm and jatropha produced in Indonesia. The LCA system boundary for this study was from cradle to gate, which consists of eight sub-processes, with functional unit (FU) of 1 ton biodiesel fuel (BDF). Life cycle inventory (LCI) analysis was performed using the data collected from oil palm plantation and Jatropha curcas centre, both located in western part of Jawa island in Indonesia, become primary data. The analysis was also grouped into unstable production stage and stable production stage in order to accommodate the natural growth characteristics of both crops. The LCI results were utilized to perform impact assessment using software MiLCA-JEMAI version 1.1.2.5 for data processing.