Develop Malaysia, develop palm oil biomass, develop bioenergy: the primer

Conclusions

The newly emerging biomass markets present significant economic opportunities for the oil palm industry.

These challenges can best be addressed by initiatives that bring together the necessary counterparts. RSPO and OPBC are two successful examples. Recently, the Malaysian biomass industry inaugurated the Malaysian Biomass Industries Confederation (MBIC) to promote the commercialization, marketing and utilization of high value biomass products applications.

A second opportunity lies in creating collection centers and biomass industry hubs (like POIC, BioXCell) to overcome logistic and technology challenges and costs and to benefit from the co-siting of related and complementing businesses.

A third opportunity resides in the creation of facilitative tools that help the oil palm biomass industry in Malaysia to grow. The development of technical product standards are extremely useful tools to provide guidance for producers and end-users of biomass products to design their facilities and operations.

Product standards can also be extended to sustainability questions, providing a strong reference point or definition for all players in the biomass value chain. Other tools include price references and standardization of trading contracts to facilitate the commercialization of oil palm biomass products.

An exciting road is ahead of the palm oil industry to capitalize the potential of the oil palm biomass for the production of energy and chemicals. With the potential market growth and value it can be a significant contribution to the economy of Malaysia and to a more sustainable world. It will not be easy and requires serious commitment. But together with the other players in the biomass value chains significant strength can be created to make it happen.

A longer version of this article originally appeared in The Journal of Oil Palm and the Environment. The author, Dr. Ronald Zwart, Senior Vice President BioRenewables Dovre Group, can be contacted at [email protected] or + 31-6-8184 4288