The study “The fat of the land” reveals that it takes 8,800 dead pigs to feed a flight from Paris to New York.
translation thefreeonline on 05/31/2023 by Ecologistas en Accion about pdf report The fat of the land
A fact that calls into question the viability of biofuels based on residues such as animal fats, despite the fact that they are sold as the panacea to decarbonise the European transport sector.
The use of biodiesel from animal fats to power our cars and planes has doubled in the last decade and is 40 times higher than in 2006, a new study by Transport & Environment (T&E) shows.
The environmental group, together with ECODES and Ecologistas en Acción, calls for more transparency so that consumers know what goes into their deposits and feeds their flights.
The EU promotes this by-product of industrial and intensive farming to, supposedly, reduce carbon emissions from the fuels used in transport, despite the strong impact of this model of industrial farming on emissions. Now they target aircraft and, to a lesser extent, ships.
However, as T&E warns in its study, there are not enough fats to meet all the demand.
Almost half of European animal fats are already used for the production of biodiesel, despite the fact that they are widely used in the animal feed, soap and cosmetics industries:
The burning of biofuels from animal fats will triple by 2030 , which poses two bottlenecks in terms of its availability and sustainability.
In fact, today, as T&E warns, talking about sustainable production is not correct in the case of a sector such as industrial livestock farming with high methane emissions and deforestation due to imported soybeans for animal feed.
Carlos Rico, responsible for biofuels in the Spanish office of T&E, affirms that “it turns out that pigs fly. We’ve been burning animal fats in cars for years without drivers knowing. Now they will be the fuel for your next flight.
But this cannot be sustained without depriving other sectors of them, which in turn are likely to migrate to harmful alternatives such as palm oil. We need more transparency so consumers know what goes into their tanks and fuels their flights.”
A flight from Paris to New York needs 8,800 dead pigs
Large airlines such as Ryanair and Wizz Air have recently closed important agreements with oil suppliers for the manufacture of so-called “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAF, for its acronym in English). Information on the exact raw materials used in SAFs is often imprecise and not transparent.
But forecasts by the consulting firm Stratas Advisors indicate that animal fats will be, together with used cooking oil, the raw material from waste most used in SAFs.
Like all biofuels made from waste, the availability of animal fats is limited. It is neither possible nor desirable to increase industrial meat production. A flight from Paris to New York needs 8,800 dead pigs, according to T&E calculations.
Animal feed manufacturers have already warned that they will have to turn to “less sustainable options” such as palm oil, while soap and cosmetics producers will also likely turn to palm as the cheapest option available.
Said production is strongly linked to processes of deforestation of tropical forests, loss of biodiversity, increase in GHG emissions and violations of human rights.
Half of the oils in Biofuels are now from animals
In the most extreme case where virgin palm oil replaces animal fats in the oleochemical industry (soaps, cosmetics), CO2 emissions from biofuels from animal fats could be almost twice as damaging to the climate as those from conventional diesel.
Report links world’s top meat firm to deforestation
In this sense, «The competition for the use of animal fats highlights the challenge of increasing the production of biofuels from waste. Animal fats do not grow from trees. Many suppliers will have to choose to use palm oil for their products.
And as we’ve seen with used cooking oil, this also increases the risk of fraud. The possible incorrect labeling of animal fats suggests that fraud could be taking place on an industrial scale”, says Lucía Rúa, head of the ECODES biofuels project.
potential fraud
Animal fats fall into three categories. Categories 1 and 2 include animal fats that cannot be consumed by humans or animals (either are of poor quality or carry disease), while category 3 animal fats are of better quality and are used in various industries.
The European Renewable Energy Directive (RED), recently revised for the third time, aims to incentivize the use of category 1 and 2 animal fats for the production of biofuels for transport, allowing fuel suppliers to double-count their use. to the fulfillment of the renewable objectives of the RED.
T&E, Ecodes and Ecologistas en Acción warn of the potential fraud involved in this measure, since it could trigger high-quality animal fats to be classified as low-quality (category 1 and 2, instead of 3) so that energy companies can benefit of this double counting.
A reality that already came to light in 2022, when European countries declared that they consumed twice as many biofuels from categories 1 and 2 as the animal fat industry declared to produce. If this is done deliberately, it would represent industry-wide fraud, they warn.
To reduce the chances of fraud and the negative consequences resulting from the withdrawal of animal fats used by other industries, environmental organizations are asking policy makers to exclude Category 3 animal fats from the list of eligible biofuel feedstocks within of the Renewable Energy Directive.
Marta García Pallarés, spokesperson for Ecologistas en Acción, concludes:
“The decarbonization of the transport sector cannot happen by deepening an ecocidal industrial livestock model that translates into more emissions, deforestation for feed production, contamination of soils and aquifers, and animal abuse.”
translation thefreeonline on 05/31/2023 by Ecologistas en Accion about pdf report The fat of the land
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