15/07/2010 (View Online) - A GREEN energy plant boss has pledged that his company will never use food grade palm oil to produce national grid electricity at their Portland site.

Chief executive Mr Gudgeon, whose W4BRE company won planning permission for the plant at Balaclava Bay, made his pledge at a packed public meeting to debate the plant.

He said W4BRE would only use certified sustainable non-edible vegetable oils from a number of different countries in Africa and South America.

He said: “We are concerned about the sustainability issues surrounding the supply of food grade palm oil for energy use, particularly from Malaysia and Indonesia.

“Together they produce around 85 per cent of the world’s palm oil where there continues to be illegal deforestation with its negative effect on both greenhouse gas emissions and on the forest inhabitants, both human and animal.

“We have therefore entered into negotiation with non-food vegetable oil producers in Africa and South America for non-food grade vegetable oils that will fully meet government department Ofgem’s sustainability criteria and which will be of sufficient volume to provide all the oil required for the Portland plant.

“Our view is that using non-edible vegetable oils from plants such as the Jatropha  tree will use eroded land incapable of supporting food crops, it will help people living a hand-to-mouth existence, it will be environmentally positive and it will generate much needed power for this country.

“Potentially our power plant on Portland could be totally run on Jatropha by 2015.”

He added that W4BRE also hoped to use molecular traceability technology to quality check all its vegetable oil purchases.

This itself would be checked, he said, via a local committee W4BRE was committed to setting up which would monitor vegetable oil purchases and sustainabilityamd report back to the local community. It would have six to eight members, at least two of which would be local Portland representatives.