This suspicion has been around for some time. But from the perspective of German farmers, too little is being done to combat alleged fraud involving bio-oil imports from questionable sources.
The German Farmers’ Association is complaining about fraudulent deals with biodiesel imports from China. “We are seeing how the German market is being flooded with supposedly advanced biodiesel based on used fats from China, but which obviously comes from relabelled palm oil,” said the association’s general secretary, Bernhard Krüsken, to the “Augsburger Allgemeine”.
Oil companies could count the barely controlled certificates of questionable imported fuels several times in their CO2 balance, Krüsken added. They would therefore buy less domestic rapeseed oil or bioethanol for the prescribed blending into diesel and petrol.
The damage cannot be precisely quantified. “But one can assume that the amount for German farmers is in the tens of millions,” said Krüsken. Added to this is the general damage to climate policy and to trust in certification in third countries. Most oil palms grow in huge plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia.
The association representative pointed out that the alleged fraud has been “more or less openly on the table for more than a year and a half.” However, despite requests from domestic producers, the Federal Environment Ministry evidently sees no urgent need for action. The certificate system set up by the EU for biofuels produced abroad invites fraud and abuse if the company commissioned to do so is not in a position to control and monitor compliance with the standards.
In recent weeks, an affair involving alleged fraud in climate protection projects in China has also caused a stir. According to reports, German oil companies may have had a contribution credited to their CO2 balances on several occasions that was due to projects in China that probably never existed. Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) spoke of a “web of fraud” and “serious environmental crime”.
According to Lemke, 40 of 69 projects in China are currently suspected of fraud. The fraud was made possible by a mechanism that allows mineral oil companies in Germany to achieve legally prescribed climate targets with the help of climate protection projects in China.
Source: Stern
