Climate Change: Growing Doubts Over Chip Fat Biofuel

Climate modification: over chip fat biofuel

21 April 2021

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New research study concerns the ecological impact of rising imports of used 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 across Europe that imports now represent majority of the UCO that’s made into fuel.

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

With no screening of what’s can be found in, professionals believe it is also ripe for scams.

Used cooking oil imports might enhance logging

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

They’ve encouraged making use of biofuels as an essential ways of suppressing carbon from cars and lorries.

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

The truth that these crops can be re-grown and absorb more CO2 implies they counteract the carbon produced when used in engines.

Soy and palm oil were when extensively used as parts of biodiesel but this practice has been commonly discredited since it encourages logging.

So for the last years or two, using utilized cooking oil has broadened enormously as an alternative feedstock for fuel.

Chip fat and other waste oils have actually become a key element of biodiesel with an efficient industry emerging throughout Europe to collect and process the product.

But with the quantity of biodiesel made from UCO increasing by around 40% every year given that 2014, there simply isn’t adequate chip fat to go 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 extremely problematic when it concerns impacts 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 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 however the flow of UCO is most likely to be similar.

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

By contrast, Thailand, which has a population of 70 million individuals, managed to collect around 5 million litres of UCO in 2019.

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

“And they’re simply buying more virgin oil and that virgin oil is largely palm oil, since that’s the cheapest oil readily available.

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

Another major problem with UCO is the suspicion of fraud.

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

As oils of various types are blended in bulk for transport, and no screening of the materials is performed, some professionals believe scams is swarming.

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

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

He states 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 registered.

“The mix of modified accreditation plans and the pan-EU track and trace database will make sure that no sustainability concerns emerge in the entire biofuels and bio-liquids supply chain,” he informed BBC News.

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

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

“Rising the need beyond sustainable supply levels would increase these concerns, and risks of utilizing ‘fake’ UCO, potentially causing indirect effects such as deforestation.”

Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmcgrathbbc, external.

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