Carbon Emission Reduction in the Oil Palm Biomass Sector

A Strategic Sustainability Assessment for Carbon Emission Reduction in the Oil Palm Biomass Sector. The purpose of this study is to examine a sustainable solution that is linked to Malaysia's effort in reducing carbon emission through promoting various efforts as an alternative renewable energy through oil palm biomass activities. The research aim was to analyzed the perspectives of six sustainability dimensions: social, environmental, economic, social-environmental, social-economic, and environmental-economic using the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) model as the sustainability indicator to value the strategic impact.

Malaysia has made the commitment to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) by 45% by 2030 and the December 2015 Paris Agreement is in place to ensure that the countries affected could play its part to reduce carbon emission. The top priority or goals will be to see through the reduction from several traditional energy e.g. promoting renewable energy, agriculture (oil palm biomass utilisation), and policy making (national policy subsidisation). Consequently, there are only three sustainability dimensions supported the act through the use of oil palm biomass to carbon emission reduction, however, the remaining three sustainability dimension are not strongly supporting the act. Inherently, Malaysia carbon emission reduction policy decision makers need to perceive the important factors and sustainability measures. The oil palm biomass for carbon reduction can be considered as alternative measures to improve and to achieve the sustainability goals in the future. The methodology engaged in this study is a literature review and case study and the content analysis to explain the dimensions criteria to support and complement the analysis.

The Triple Bottom Line model was adopted to support the three major areas of sustainability: social, environmental, and economic originated from the theory development by Elkington and Elkington (1997), Elkington (1998) and Carter and Easton (2011). The result indicate that the proposed model was suitable and confined to Malaysia's oil palm Biomass solution to carbon emission reduction in Malaysia's linked companies. This study fills the gap by incorporating the core dimensions and cross-dimensions as the strategic sustainability factor. The creation of this strategy is based on the research needed to incorporate the understanding and influence on carbon emission reduction in the oil palm biomass sector. The results are only generalizable to the population from the carbon emission linked companies. Future research should include samples from other private and public companies so that the results can be generalizable over a larger population.