This is the text of the German TV report Monday March. 12 2007
(some 3 million viewers)

http://de.indymedia.org/2007/03/170912.shtml

German 'clean power' destroys Asian jungle
Diet Simon 15.03.2007 12:18 Themen: Weltweit Ökologie

While jungle is destroyed on a large scale in Southeast Asia for
palm oil plantations, nearly all larger German heat and power co-
generation stations have switched from locally produced rapeseed oil
to imported palm oil because it's cheaper. Research at Munich
University has proved that making plantations and the burning of the
rain forests and peat areas emit many thousands of times as much CO2
can then be prevented by burning palm oil - disastrous for the
climate.

While jungle is destroyed on a large scale in Southeast Asia for palm
oil plantations, nearly all larger German heat and power co-
generation stations have switched from locally produced rapeseed oil
to imported palm oil because it's cheaper.

This has been researched by Bavarian television for its "report
München" programme aired nationally.

That makes the climate-friendly co-generation plants, which produce
both power and heating, climate killers.

Jungle is being burnt down in Indonesia and Malaysia to be replaced
with oil palms.

Satellite images taken of Sarawak in 1990 still show green
rainforest. Eleven years later there are bare areas and plantations.
Smoke from the vast fires in Indonesia has been carried as far as
Africa.

Professor Florian Siegert of Munich University makes a damning
indictment. "We were able to prove that the making of these
plantations and the burning of the rain forests and peat areas emits
many thousands of times as much CO2 as we then are able to prevent
by
using palm oil. And that is a disastrous balance for the climate."

Axel Friedrich at the German Environment Agency notes that co-
generation plants as such are more environment-friendly than normal
power stations because the heat normally wasted when power is
generated is also used.

"But if I use palm oil in this application I destroy part of this
advantage because I'm destroying jungle."

Report München accessed an unpublished study by the Leipzig based
Institute for Energy and Environment stating that German co-
generation plants will just this year produce at least 1.3 billion
kilowatt-hours of power from palm oil.

That's equivalent, for example, to the entire German solar power
output in 2005.

What's more, the operators of palm oil power stations receive
subsidies. They will get some 200 million euros this year from a
levy collected under the Renewable Energy Promotion Act, the
legislation for German alternative energies. It will go onto power
consumers' bills.

A paradoxical law in this case: just like home-grown rape, oil palms
are treated as re-growing plants from agricultural operations – even
though these operations are in Southeast Asia.

The TV reporters confronted the German environment minister, Sigmar
Gabriel, with their findings.

He even sees the turnaround to more renewable energies jeopardised
by the German palm oil problem.

"I find that very worrying because everyone using clean power
promoted by the act thinks they're doing something good, and if
they've done that in part by destroying rain forest then we're close
to discrediting the sense of this renewables act in public awareness."

The City Works Schwäbisch Hall burns 7,500 tonnes of palm oil a year
in a five-megawatt co-generation plant.

The CEO, Johannes van Bergen, justifies it by arguing that rape oil
had become too dear. Moreover, he says, he gets his oil only from
old plantations in Malaysia. And his supplier was a member of the so-
called "Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil".

But that is as yet only a well-meaning working group without genuine
controls. So could the power station chief check on the
sustainability of the oil he burns? he was asked.

"I'm using a German law. As a small power works do I now have to do
international research to rule out that a rain forest is cut down
somewhere?

"Let me pass that back to you: why didn't our government, when it
was making this law, see to it that a corresponding certification of
these oils was written into the law?"

Although there is no certification of sustainably produced palm oil
yet, those trading in it already like citing it as justification.

The TV reporters found out that Urpower, the operator of a large co-
generation plant in Saxony, buys palm oil on the world market.

Replying in writing to questions, the firm cited its membership of
the round table and claimed it uses only vegetable oil "verified" by
the World Wildlife Fund.

WWF told the reporters there's "no palm oil on the market yet"
meeting the round table criteria.

Axel Friedrich of the environment agency concurs that there is no
system for certifying palm oil.

"Anyone who claims there is, is deliberately or unknowingly telling
a lie. There is no system for the certification of palm oil. Moves
are afoot to put such things in place but none exists.

"Anyone claiming he's bought palm oil from an existing old
plantation, takes palm oil out of the system, of course, and so
increases the pressure to start new palm oil plantations at the
expense of the jungle."

A way out would be a certification system for provable sustainable
palm oil plantations set up, for example, on already fallow land. But
when will the overdue certification come?

"We want to have suggestions worked out by the middle of the year,"
says the environment minister. "That can't happen from one day to the
next. It's often wished that one could just throw a lever.

"But I'm telling you that you're talking to countries that have a
completely different take on this to ours. Not a good answer, but at
least an honest one."

[Note: I do wonder how the statement "Anyone claiming he's bought
palm oil from an existing old plantation, takes palm oil out of the
system, of course, and so increases the pressure to start new palm
oil plantations at the expense of the jungle." squares with the
suggestion that RSPO certification will be an answer - presumably if
companies buy from the 1% or so of palm oil that may in future be
certified 'sustainable', they'll still increase the pressure to start
new plantations elsewhere? Almuth]