Climate change: Growing doubts over chip fat biofuel

21 April 2021

comments

354 Comments

New research questions the environmental impact of increasing imports of utilized cooking oil (UCO) into the UK and Europe.

Chip fat and other oils are thought about waste, so when they are used to make biodiesel it saves carbon emissions by displacing fossil oil.

But such is the need across Europe that imports now represent majority of the UCO that's made into fuel.

According to the study, external, there's no way to prove these imports are sustainable.

Without any testing of what's coming in, experts believe it is also ripe for scams.

Used cooking oil imports might enhance logging

Consumers present 'growing risk' to tropical forests

Reducing emissions from transport is showing to be among the toughest difficulties for governments all over the world.

They've motivated the usage of biofuels as an important ways of suppressing carbon from cars and lorries.

Biofuels are typically a mix of fossil fuel and oil made from plants or vegetables.

The truth that these crops can be re-grown and soak up more CO2 suggests they cancel out the carbon released when utilized in engines.

Soy and palm oil were as soon as extensively utilized as elements of biodiesel but this practice has been extensively rejected due to the fact that it encourages deforestation.

So for the last years approximately, using utilized cooking oil has expanded massively as an alternative feedstock for fuel.

Chip fat and other waste oils have ended up being a key part of biodiesel with an efficient industry springing up across Europe to gather and process the product.

But with the quantity of biodiesel made from UCO increasing by around 40% every year considering that 2014, there merely isn't sufficient chip fat to walk around.

According to a report from the project group Transport & Environment, external, over half of the UCO utilized in Europe is imported.

Their research study suggests this is highly problematic when it concerns influence on the environment.

While UCO is thought about a waste product in the UK, in China, Indonesia and Malaysia it has long been used to feed animals. The report raises the concern of what individuals in these countries are changing the UCO with, when it is exported.

In 2019, Malaysia exported 90 million litres of UCO to the UK and Ireland. Figures for their exports to other European countries aren't readily available but the circulation of UCO is likely to be comparable.

With a population of around 33 million, that's close to three litres per head of used oil that's collected and exported to the UK and Ireland alone.

By comparison, Thailand, which has a population of 70 million individuals, managed to gather around five million litres of UCO in 2019.

"Because we are buying it, they have actually less utilized cooking oil to use on the important things that they were formerly utilizing it for," stated Greg Archer with Transport & Environment.

"And they're just purchasing more virgin oil and that virgin oil is mostly palm oil, since that's the cheapest oil offered.

"So indirectly, we're just encouraging more deforestation in Southeast Asia."

Another major issue with UCO is the suspicion of fraud.

Because of demand from Europe, the cost of UCO is often higher than palm oil. The worry is that some unethical traders are just diluting deliveries of UCO with palm.

As oils of different types are mixed in bulk for transportation, and no screening of the products is brought out, some specialists think scams is swarming.

The recommendation of fraud anywhere along the chain of supply is declined by the European Waste-to-Advanced Biofuels Association (EWABA), who say there are robust accreditation schemes in place.

"It is extensively known that the European Commission has actually taken appropriate actions to entirely market practices in biofuel markets," said Angel Alberdi, EWABA's secretary general.

He says a brand-new database being developed by the EU will ensure that trading, certification and sustainability data on all bio-liquids will have to be signed up.

"The mix of revised certification plans and the pan-EU track and trace database will ensure that no sustainability problems emerge in the whole biofuels and bio-liquids supply chain," he informed BBC News.

Others in the field are concerned that the database idea, which was very first mooted in 2018, might not be efficient in stemming suspected fraud.

The report from Transport & Environment mentions that with shipping and aviation seeking to decarbonise by utilizing biofuels, need for UCO might double over the next years.

"Rising the demand beyond sustainable supply levels would increase these issues, and threats of using 'fake' UCO, potentially leading to indirect effects such as logging."

Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmcgrathbbc, external.

Related subjects

COP26

Paris climate arrangement

Climate