1 US EPA Says it is Auditing Biofuel Producers' Secondhand Cooking Oil Supply

Rosita Archuleta edited this page 2025-01-11 06:59:59 +01:00

By Leah Douglas

Aug 7 (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released investigations into the supply chains of a minimum of 2 eco-friendly fuel manufacturers amidst industry concerns that some might be using deceptive feedstocks for biodiesel to secure lucrative government subsidies.

EPA spokesperson Jeffrey Landis told Reuters that the company has actually released audits over the past year, however decreased to identify the business targeted since the examinations are continuous.

The production of biodiesel from sustainable active ingredients, like utilized cooking oil, can make refiners a slew of state and federal ecological and climate subsidies, including tradable credits under a program administered by the EPA called the Renewable Fuel Standard. But worries have been mounting that some materials identified as used cooking oil are actually cheaper and less sustainable virgin palm oil, a product that is connected with logging and other environmental damage.

The problem came into focus following a surge in used cooking oil exports from Asia in recent years that experts have said includes unrealistically high volumes relative to the amount of cooking oil used and recovered in the region. The European Union is also investigating feedstocks over the fraud concerns.

The EPA audits began after the company upgraded domestic supply-chain accounting requirements in July 2023 for eco-friendly fuel producers seeking to earn credits under the RFS, he stated.

"EPA has conducted audits of renewable fuel producers since July 2023 which consists of, amongst other things, an examination of the places that utilized cooking oil utilized in eco-friendly fuel production was gathered," he stated. "These investigations, however, are continuous and we are unable to talk about continuous enforcement examinations."

U.S. senators from farm states have actually required more oversight of biofuel feedstocks, saying federal firms need to be as extensive in verifying imports as they are auditing domestic supply chains.

"The Biden administration has developed energetic requirements to verify, not simply trust, American producers, and it is necessary that the very same scrutiny is used to imported feedstocks," 6 U.S. senators, led by Roger Marshall and Sherrod Brown, wrote in a June 20 letter to federal companies.

Another letter from 15 senators to the Treasury Department on July 30 advised the administration to omit imported like UCO from an additional clean fuel tax credit program passed in the Inflation Reduction Act. (Reporting by Leah Douglas in Washington Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Matthew Lewis)