This summary report presents the results of a life cycle assessment (LCA) of palm oil production at United Plantations Berhad in Malaysia and Indonesia. Prepared by Jannick Schmidt and Michele De Rosa for United Plantations, it updates a series of assessments and follows production from 2004 to 2018. The functional unit is one kilogram of refined, neutralised, bleached and deodorised (NBD) vegetable oil at the refinery gate. The boundary includes cultivation, palm oil milling and refining, together with relevant upstream inputs such as fertilisers, fuels and machinery. Distribution, use and end-of-life are outside the study boundary.
The study follows ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 and uses SimaPro 8 with the Stepwise 2006 impact assessment method. It reports potential effects on global warming, biodiversity, respiratory health and human toxicity. It also models indirect land use change (iLUC), which represents land transformation and intensification elsewhere that may result from additional demand for productive land. The nature-conservation scenario considers both local effects avoided by protecting land and indirect effects associated with land demand being met elsewhere. The assessment combines detailed company data for estates, mills and the refinery with background data for other processes. For the 2017 update, United Plantations’ research department supplied data remotely; earlier assessment rounds included onsite data collection.
For one kilogram of NBD palm oil, the reported greenhouse gas emissions are 1.22 kg CO2-equivalent without iLUC, 1.55 kg CO2-equivalent with iLUC and without nature conservation, and 1.18 kg CO2-equivalent with both iLUC and nature conservation. Across 2004 to 2018, the report calculates reductions of 46%, 40% and 54% for those same scenarios, respectively. The assessment identifies oxidation of peat soils and nitrous oxide from cultivation as major contributors. At the mills, methane from palm oil mill effluent (POME) treatment is a relevant source. The report links reductions over time in part to biogas capture at mills, the installation of the Optimill in 2018 and higher yields that year.
The report compares United Plantations’ results with industry averages for Malaysian and Indonesian palm oil, European rapeseed oil, Ukrainian sunflower oil and Indian peanut oil. These benchmark data are from 2011. The report excludes toxicity results from this comparison because the industry-average data do not include pesticide emissions and heavy-metal contaminants in fertilisers. Its findings describe this company’s production and the modelled scenarios; they should not be read as a universal ranking of oils or as results for all palm oil producers.
