An integrated carbon footprint accounting and sustainability index for palm oil mills

Abstract

Palm oil industry has received criticism from various parties on the issue of sustainability and the greenhouse gases. Carbon footprint accounting are widely used as a metric of climate change impacts and the main focus of many sustainability policies among companies and authorities. However, carbon footprint accounting has limitation to represent sustainability as a whole and may resulting inaccurate selection of further mitigation. This paper evaluates sustainability and greenhouse gases simultaneously using an integrated palm oil mill carbon footprint accounting (POMCFA) and palm oil mill sustainability index (POMSI) method. The integration was performed via the adoption of data synchronization of the carbon footprint accounting and sustainability assessment. The analysis shows that highest carbon dioxide equivalent emission was contributed by palm oil mill effluent followed by diesel consumption and water consumption. In terms of sustainability scoring, the results show that the environmental aspect achieved the lowest scores compared to other aspects (social and economy). Weaknesses identified include diesel consumption, palm oil mill effluent and boiler emission. The assessment analysed in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent and sustainability scoring demonstrates its potential to provide comprehensive mitigation selection purposes.