A new global study has revealed the extent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by vegetable oil production, highlighting the need for more sustainable growing solutions.
A new global study has revealed the extent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by vegetable oil production, highlighting the need for more sustainable growing solutions.
Scientists from the University of Nottingham’s Future Food Beacon carried out the first analysis to consider GHG emissions from almost all possible systems that are currently used to produce palm, soybean, rapeseed and sunflower oil around the world. The study was a meta-analysis, that incorporated all relevant studies concerning the environmental impact of oil production published between 2000 and 2020. The findings have been published today in Science of the Total Environment.
This new study reflects almost 6,000 producers in 38 countries, and is representative of over 71% of global vegetable oil production. Across all oil crop systems, median GHG emissions were 3.81 kg CO2e per kg refined oil. Crop specific median emissions ranged from 2.49 kg CO2e for rapeseed oil to 4.25 kg CO2e for soybean oil per kg refined oil.
Median emissions from soybean oil were higher than for palm oil, despite palm oil getting more negative attention. However, median rapeseed and sunflower oil systems had fewer emissions than both palm and soybean oil, so appear to be more sustainable choices.
Read more at University of Nottingham
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