1 Climate Change: Growing Doubts Over Chip Fat Biofuel

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Climate modification: Growing doubts over chip fat biofuel

21 April 2021

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New research concerns the environmental impact 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 saves carbon emissions by displacing fossil oil.

But such is the need throughout Europe that imports now for over half of the UCO that's made into fuel.

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

With no screening of what's coming in, experts think it is also ripe for scams.

Used cooking oil imports might boost logging

Consumers present 'growing risk' to tropical forests

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

They've motivated using biofuels as an essential ways of curbing carbon from automobiles and trucks.

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

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

Soy and palm oil were once widely utilized as elements of biodiesel but this practice has actually been widely discredited due to the fact that it motivates deforestation.

So for the last decade or two, the use of utilized cooking oil has actually 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 item.

But with the quantity of biodiesel made from UCO increasing by around 40% every year because 2014, there just 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 troublesome when it comes to influence on the environment.

While UCO is thought about a waste material in the UK, in China, Indonesia and Malaysia it has actually long been utilized to feed animals. The report raises the question of what people in these nations 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 but the flow of UCO is most likely to be comparable.

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

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

"Because we are purchasing it, they have less used cooking oil to utilize on the important things that they were formerly utilizing it for," said Greg Archer with Transport & Environment.

"And they're just buying more virgin oil and that virgin oil is mostly palm oil, because that's the least expensive 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 cost of UCO is often greater than palm oil. The concern is that some unethical traders are merely watering down shipments of UCO with palm.

As oils of different types are mixed in bulk for transportation, and no testing of the products is performed, 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 state there are robust accreditation schemes in place.

"It is commonly understood that the European Commission has taken pertinent actions to entirely suppress unsound market practices in biofuel markets," stated Angel Alberdi, EWABA's secretary general.

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

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

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

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

"Rising the demand beyond sustainable supply levels would increase these concerns, and threats of utilizing 'phony' UCO, possibly resulting in indirect effects such as logging."

Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmcgrathbbc, external.

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