US EPA Says it is Auditing Biofuel Producers’ Pre-owned Cooking Oil Supply

By Leah Douglas

Aug 7 (Reuters) – The U.S. Epa has actually launched investigations into the supply chains of a minimum of two eco-friendly fuel manufacturers in the middle of industry concerns that some may be utilizing fraudulent feedstocks for biodiesel to secure lucrative government subsidies.

EPA representative Jeffrey Landis told Reuters that the agency has actually introduced audits over the previous year, however declined to identify the companies targeted because the investigations are continuous.

The production of biodiesel from sustainable components, like used cooking oil, can make refiners a multitude of state and federal ecological and environment aids, consisting of tradable credits under a program administered by the EPA called the Renewable Fuel Standard. But worries have been mounting that some materials identified as utilized cooking oil are in fact less expensive and less sustainable virgin palm oil, a product that is related to deforestation and other ecological damage.

The issue came into focus following a surge in utilized cooking oil exports from Asia in current years that analysts have actually said involves unrealistically high volumes relative to the amount of cooking oil utilized and recovered in the region. The European Union is likewise investigating feedstocks over the fraud concerns.

The EPA audits began after the agency updated domestic supply-chain accounting requirements in July 2023 for eco-friendly fuel manufacturers looking for to earn credits under the RFS, he said.

“EPA has carried out audits of eco-friendly fuel producers because July 2023 which includes, amongst other things, an assessment of the locations that used cooking oil utilized in eco-friendly fuel production was collected,” he said. “These investigations, nevertheless, are ongoing and we are not able to discuss ongoing enforcement examinations.”

U.S. senators from farm states have actually called for more oversight of feedstocks, saying federal agencies should be as rigorous in verifying imports as they are auditing domestic supply chains.

“The Biden administration has created energetic requirements to validate, not simply trust, American producers, and it is imperative 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 agencies.

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