Fraudulent Biodiesel

A story from Bloomberg begins:

The Biden administration is following the paper trails of some biodiesel producers amid heightened concern the fuels are at times being made with deceptive ingredients that violate federal law.

The action by the Environmental Protection Agency comes as farm groups and a growing number of lawmakers press the government to address worries that used cooking oil, or UCO — a valuable ingredient for making renewable fuels - could be fraudulent.

The audits seek to track the source of UCO, with at least two probes nearing completion and others expected to start soon, according to people familiar with the matter. Reuters earlier reported the EPA probes.

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The problem is palm oil. Palm oil is one of the world's most frequently employed vegetable oils. It ends up (sometimes after the recycling of its original use as a culinary oil, hence the term UCO above) as a component in biodiesel, a fuel on which many hopes for a sustainable energy system must rest.

But palm oil is NOT part of a sustainable system. Forests are being chopped away to create the palm plantations, and that deforestation is part of the problem, not part of the solutions. Real healthy forests have to remain as part of the planet to be sustained.

Here there is some strange bedfellowship going on though. Advocates of energy sustainability, a stricter understanding thereof than palm oil can satisfy, have teamed up with America-firststers to lobby for the EPA to get tough on palm oil. Palm oil comes largely from southeast Asia. Alternative vegetable sources in the biodiesel supply chain, soy and corn, come from farmers in the US.

Proper respect, finally, to Kim Chipman, one of Bloomberg's experts on food economics and supply chains, for staying on top of this. I've included her headshot from LinkedIn, above.

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