New data shows Commission maladministration is an open door to palm oil fraud

On December 5 DG Energy finally published its data on the origins of renewable fuels certified for transport under the Renewable Energy Directive.  The findings are worse than feared. 

James Cogan is a policy advisor to Ethanol Europe.

The data shows the Commission’s system for authenticating renewables to be a license to print money for unscrupulous operators.  It allows huge volumes of materials which are not incentivised under the regulation – such as virgin palm oil –– to be falsely certified as materials which are strongly incentivised – such as used cooking oil (known as UCO).

Used cooking oil is on track to account for a quarter of renewable transport fuel demand in Europe, and the recent commissioning of several new HVO refineries by the oil majors just as palm oil is being phased out, signals greater growth to come.

The numbers speak for themselves.  A simple fact of UCO supply is that there is a limit to how much of it can be collected, and a lower limit to how much actually is collected. In Europe an average of two litres per capita of used cooking oil are certified annually, with some countries managing up to five litres and many not even reaching one.  The world average is well under one litre per person.

UCOgate

So how is it possible that 13 litres per capita were certified as originating in Italy in 2022, or 12 litres per capita in Malaysia, or 9 in the United Arab Emirates, or 7 in Singapore?  And how on earth did EU certifiers in Malta give the thumbs up to an eye-watering eleven hundred litres per capita, coming from zero the year before?   The Italian recyclers’ trade press says just 1.5 litres of UCO per capita were collected there in 2022, indicating that nearly 90% of the official volumes reported for Italy by DG Energy are false.

In 2022 the EU Ombudsman described the European Commission’s lack of transparency on biofuels data as maladministration. The same term applies to the findings above, which easily surpass the Dieselgate scandal, with UCOgate being entirely down to poor governance by the regulator.  The Commission also falls down badly in the design phase of its regulation, as shown by the LátensDimenzió scientific review of its Impact Assessment earlier this year, while the European Court of Auditors has just reported a myriad of other failings in its new report on the matter.

So, at what point does the EU governance system kick in and fix the problem?  At what point does the organisation responsible for the problems get replaced, and at what point do the stakeholders – from European drivers and energy suppliers to law-abiding farmers and processors unable to compete with fraud – get the apology and the reform they deserve?