Japan’s renewable energy push backfires as palm oil takes over

In Japan, policy established in 2011 to help improve the environmental performance of energy in the aftermath of Fukushima has ended up promoting the use of palm oil rather than forestry residue and palm kernel shells as originally expected. The most recent government data shows palm oil currently accounts for 40% of feedstocks for bioenergy production. There are increasing concerns that the GHG performance of the palm oil may be worse than coal when land use changes are taken into consideration.