Europe consumes 130,000 barrels of used cooking oil per day – 8 times more than it collects – while the United States trails at 40,000 barrels per day: to meet this rapidly growing demand, both blocs are importing more and more oil used kitchenware (Used cooking oilUco) from China, as well as from Indonesia and Malaysia.
«In Italy biofuels from Uco are presented as a strategy to pursue energy independence, but the reality is completely different: we depend and will depend largely on imports – explains Carlo Tritto of the environmentalist association Transport&Environment, which has just published a new study on the topic – There are few truly sustainable biofuels from used oils: only those collected domestically and used for the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate sectors such as aviation, whose market is more than sufficient to absorb national volumes, should be used . Instead they are used widely in cars and trucks, pushing demand too high and resulting in a situation of commercial dependence on dubious imports from Asia.”
Already today, China exports more than half of the Uco it collects, used mainly to be transformed into biofuels for European and US cars and trucks. And given that, without a change in direction, the demand for used cooking oils will triple by 2030, the trend seems destined to worsen.
To meet the objectives on Sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), Ryanair alone would need all the Uco available in Europe to power just 12.5% of its flights, i.e. its voluntary 2030 objective.
However, imports of low-cost Chinese waste oils make the collection business in the EU unattractive: collecting UCO in Asia costs around 30% less than in Europe, making the collection business in Europe less attractive. The EU could potentially recover double the UCO it collects today, but would be more likely to do so without cheap Chinese imports.
At the same time, the study states that, already today, China uses and exports more Uco than it collects, suggesting evidence of possible fraud and raising strong suspicions that virgin vegetable oil (e.g. palm) may be labeled as waste oil, for then be exported to Europe.
Even Malaysia, one of the most important producers of palm oil, exports three times more used cooking oil than it can collect domestically. “The fact that Malaysia – one of the world’s largest producers of palm oil – exports many more UCOs than it collects, demonstrates that the risk of fraud along the supply chains is more than high,” argues Tritto.
In light of the evidence emerging from this study, T&E calls for a complete review of the current certification system. The system relies on self-declarations from UCO points of origin (such as restaurants) and lacks effective tests to analyze raw materials arriving at biorefineries; the environmental association is therefore calling for the EU to move from voluntary, independent and industry-led schemes to stricter regulation, with greater government controls at European and national level.
