A CRADLE-TO-GATE STUDY OF GHG EMISSIONS FROM THE TRANSPORTATION OF PALM OIL, PALM OLEIN AND PALM STEARIN USING THE LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT APPROACH

This life cycle assessment (LCA) is a cradle-to-gate study of energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in transportation of palm oil, palm olein and palm stearin along the palm oil supply chain.This includes the transportation of the oil palm pollinated bunches from the 'mother palm' to the seed laboratories, the germinated seeds to the nurseries, seedlings from nurseries to oil palm plantations, fresh fruit bunches (FFB) from plantations to mills, crude palm oil (CPO) from mills to refineries and refined, bleached and deodorised (RBD) palm oil (RBO PO) and its fractionated products namely RBD palm olein (RBD POo) and RBD palm stearin (RBO POs) from refineries/fractionation plants to ports and retailers.The objective of this study is to use the LCA approach to identify at which stage of the palm oil supply chain that transportation contributes the most to the environmental performance in terms of GHG emissions within the boundary of the study.The analysis of the LCI data for determining overall GHG emissions for the transportation along the oil palm supply chain, on the basis of the production of 1 t of the RBD PO, indicated that the transportation of FFB from plantation to mill and transportation of CPO from mill to refinery gave the highest GHG emissions.Based on the production of 1 t of the RBD PO, the GHG emissions during the transportation of FFB from plantation to mill and the transportation of CPO from mill to refinery were 21.94 kg CO 2 eq. and 20.86 kg CO 2 eq., respectively.