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Climate change: over chip fat biofuel

21 April 2021

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New research study concerns the environmental impact 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 utilized to make biodiesel it conserves carbon emissions by displacing fossil oil.

But such is the demand across Europe that imports now account for majority of the UCO that's made into fuel.

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

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

Used cooking oil imports may improve deforestation

Consumers posture 'growing hazard' to tropical forests

Reducing emissions from transport is proving to be one of the most difficult challenges for governments all over the world.

They've motivated using biofuels as a crucial means of suppressing carbon from automobiles and trucks.

Biofuels are usually a blend 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 given off when utilized in engines.

Soy and palm oil were when widely utilized as components of biodiesel however this practice has actually been commonly challenged due to the fact that it encourages deforestation.

So for the last decade approximately, using utilized cooking oil has actually broadened massively as an alternative feedstock for fuel.

Chip fat and other waste oils have actually become a crucial element of biodiesel with a reliable market emerging throughout Europe to collect and process the product.

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

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

Their study recommends this is highly bothersome 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 concern 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 nations aren't available but the circulation 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 individuals, handled to collect around five million litres of UCO in 2019.

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

"And they're just buying more virgin oil which virgin oil is mainly palm oil, since that's the cheapest oil offered.

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

Another significant problem with UCO is the suspicion of scams.

Because of demand from Europe, the price of UCO is typically higher than palm oil. The worry is that some unethical traders are just watering down deliveries of UCO with palm.

As oils of different types are blended in bulk for transportation, and no testing of the products is performed, some experts think scams is rife.

The tip 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 schemes in place.

"It is extensively known that the European Commission has actually taken appropriate steps to completely curb unsound 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 information on all bio-liquids will have to be signed up.

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

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

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

"Rising the need beyond sustainable supply levels would increase these concerns, and risks of using 'fake' UCO, potentially resulting in indirect impacts such as logging."

Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmcgrathbbc, external.

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