Climate change: Growing doubts over chip fat biofuel

21 April 2021

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New research concerns the environmental effect of rising imports of utilized cooking oil (UCO) into the UK and Europe.

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

But such is the need throughout Europe that imports now account for more than half of the UCO that’s made into fuel.

According to the study, external, there’s no method to show these imports are sustainable.

Without any screening of what’s can be found in, professionals think it is also ripe for fraud.

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Reducing emissions from transportation is showing to be among the most difficult obstacles for governments all over the world.

They’ve motivated using biofuels as an essential methods of suppressing carbon from cars and trucks and trucks.

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

The fact that these crops can be re-grown and absorb more CO2 means they counteract the carbon discharged when used in engines.

Soy and palm oil were once extensively used as components of biodiesel but this practice has been widely discredited due to the fact that it .

So for the last decade or so, making use of utilized cooking oil has actually expanded massively as an alternative feedstock for fuel.

Chip fat and other waste oils have actually ended up being a crucial element of biodiesel with an efficient market springing up throughout Europe to gather and process the item.

But with the quantity of biodiesel made from UCO increasing by around 40% every year since 2014, there merely isn’t enough chip fat to walk around.

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

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

While UCO is considered a waste product in the UK, in China, Indonesia and Malaysia it has actually long been used to feed animals. The report raises the question of what people 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 offered however the flow of UCO is most likely to be similar.

With a population of around 33 million, that’s close to 3 litres per head of utilized oil that’s gathered and exported to the UK and Ireland alone.

By comparison, Thailand, which has a population of 70 million people, handled to gather around 5 million litres of UCO in 2019.

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

“And they’re just buying more virgin oil and that virgin oil is mainly palm oil, since that’s the most affordable oil available.

“So indirectly, we’re simply encouraging more logging in Southeast Asia.”

Another major issue with UCO is the suspicion of fraud.

Because of need from Europe, the rate of UCO is typically higher than palm oil. The concern is that some dishonest traders are merely diluting deliveries of UCO with palm.

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

The recommendation of scams anywhere along the chain of supply is rejected by the European Waste-to-Advanced Biofuels Association (EWABA), who say there are robust certification plans in place.

“It is commonly known that the European Commission has taken pertinent steps to entirely suppress unsound market practices in biofuel markets,” said Angel Alberdi, EWABA’s secretary general.

He says a new database being established by the EU will make sure that trading, certification and sustainability information on all bio-liquids will need to be registered.

“The mix of revised certification schemes and the pan-EU track and trace database will guarantee that no sustainability concerns emerge in the whole biofuels and bio-liquids supply chain,” he told BBC News.

Others in the field are concerned that the database concept, which was first mooted in 2018, may not be effective in stemming believed fraud.

The report from Transport & Environment points out that with shipping and air travel seeking to decarbonise by utilizing biofuels, demand for UCO could double over the next decade.

“Rising the demand beyond sustainable supply levels would increase these concerns, and threats of using ‘phony’ UCO, possibly leading to indirect effects such as deforestation.”

Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmcgrathbbc, external.

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