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Climate modification: Growing doubts over chip fat biofuel

21 April 2021

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New research questions the environmental effect of increasing 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 account for over half of the UCO that's made into fuel.

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

Without any screening of what's coming in, experts think it is also ripe for fraud.

Used cooking oil imports may improve logging

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

They have actually encouraged making use of biofuels as an important ways of suppressing 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 means they cancel out the carbon released when utilized in engines.

Soy and palm oil were once extensively utilized as elements of biodiesel however this practice has actually been widely discredited since it encourages logging.

So for the last decade approximately, making use of utilized cooking oil has broadened massively as an alternative feedstock for fuel.

Chip fat and other waste oils have actually become an essential part of biodiesel with an effective industry springing up throughout Europe to gather and process the product.

But with the quantity of biodiesel made from UCO increasing by around 40% every year given that 2014, there merely isn't enough chip fat to go 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 recommends this is highly bothersome when it concerns influence on the environment.

While UCO is considered 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 nations 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 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 utilized 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 utilize on the important things that they were formerly using it for," Archer with Transport & Environment.

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

"So indirectly, we're simply motivating more logging in Southeast Asia."

Another significant problem with UCO is the suspicion of scams.

Because of need from Europe, the cost of UCO is often greater than palm oil. The worry is that some unscrupulous traders are just watering down shipments of UCO with palm.

As oils of different types are mixed in bulk for transport, and no testing of the products is performed, some specialists believe fraud is rife.

The idea of scams anywhere along the chain of supply is turned down by the European Waste-to-Advanced Biofuels Association (EWABA), who state there are robust accreditation plans in place.

"It is extensively known that the European Commission has actually taken relevant actions to totally suppress unsound market practices in biofuel markets," stated Angel Alberdi, EWABA's secretary general.

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

"The combination of revised certification schemes and the pan-EU track and trace database will make sure that no sustainability problems occur 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 first mooted in 2018, may not be reliable in stemming suspected scams.

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

"Rising the demand beyond sustainable supply levels would increase these issues, and risks of using 'fake' UCO, potentially causing indirect impacts such as deforestation."

Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmcgrathbbc, external.

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