Climate Change: Growing Doubts Over Chip Fat Biofuel

Climate change: Growing doubts over chip fat biofuel

21 April 2021

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

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

But such is the need across Europe that now represent over half of the UCO that’s made into fuel.

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

With no screening of what’s coming in, experts believe it is likewise ripe for fraud.

Used cooking oil imports might enhance logging

Consumers pose ‘growing hazard’ to tropical forests

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

They’ve encouraged the usage of biofuels as an essential methods of suppressing carbon from cars and trucks.

Biofuels are normally a blend of nonrenewable fuel source and oil made from plants or veggies.

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

Soy and palm oil were once widely used as parts of biodiesel but this practice has been commonly challenged because it encourages deforestation.

So for the last years or two, making use of utilized cooking oil has expanded enormously as an alternative feedstock for fuel.

Chip fat and other waste oils have actually become a crucial component of biodiesel with a reliable market emerging across Europe to collect and process the item.

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

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

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

While UCO is considered a waste material in the UK, in China, Indonesia and Malaysia it has long been used to feed animals. The report raises the concern of what people in these countries are replacing 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 nations aren’t available 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 used oil that’s gathered and exported to the UK and Ireland alone.

By contrast, Thailand, which has a population of 70 million people, handled to collect around five million litres of UCO in 2019.

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

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

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

Another significant problem with UCO is the suspicion of fraud.

Because of demand from Europe, the price of UCO is frequently greater than palm oil. The concern is that some dishonest traders are merely watering down deliveries of UCO with palm.

As oils of various types are blended in bulk for transportation, and no testing of the materials is brought out, some professionals believe fraud is rife.

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

“It is extensively understood that the European Commission has taken relevant actions to completely suppress unsound market practices in biofuel markets,” stated Angel Alberdi, EWABA’s secretary general.

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

“The mix of modified certification schemes and the pan-EU track and trace database will ensure that no sustainability issues emerge in the entire biofuels and bio-liquids supply chain,” he informed BBC News.

Others in the field are worried that the database concept, which was very first mooted in 2018, may not work in stemming believed scams.

The report from Transport & Environment mentions that with shipping and air travel seeking to decarbonise by using biofuels, demand for UCO might double over the next decade.

“Rising the demand beyond sustainable supply levels would increase these issues, and threats of utilizing ‘fake’ UCO, possibly causing indirect effects such as deforestation.”

Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmcgrathbbc, external.

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