The\u00a0adoption of the\u00a0European Commission\u2019s\u00a0(EC) draft delegated act on high indirect land-use change (ILUC) risk feedstock \u2014 which places palm oil at a competitive disadvantage against other biofuel feedstock \u2014 should be suspended, says the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC).<\/p>\n
The suspension should be\u00a0in effect until all elements of the proposed regime are \u201cclear, properly defined, scientifically based, factually evidenced, non-discriminatory and not creating unnecessary obstacles to international trade,\u201d it said in a legal and technical\u00a0assessment report on the delegated act.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, the EC adopted the delegated act which, among others, set\u00a0out the criteria to determine\u00a0high ILUC-risk feedstock for biofuels, for which a significant expansion of production area into high-carbon stock\u00a0land (such as forests, wetlands and peat land)\u00a0is observed.\u00a0The high ILUC-risk biofuels are targeted to\u00a0be phased out by 2030 at the latest.<\/p>\n
The MPOC contended that\u00a0the European Union\u2019s (EU) policy in the\u00a0new Renewable Energy Directive\u00a0(RED\u00a0II) would effectively alter the equality of competitive conditions for competing biofuel feedstock, thereby violating the non-discrimination obligations under the World Trade Organisation system and resulting in an unjustifiable quantitative restriction which was contrary to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.<\/p>\n
The council said the EU\u00a0failed to conduct a proper impact assessment on the potential impacts of RED II on the EU market\u00a0and on trade, and the report on production expansion\u00a0of relevant food and feed crops that underlay\u00a0RED II admitted\u00a0that the available data had been selectively\u00a0chosen or \u201cassumed\u201d due to the unavailability of\u00a0actual data.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch approach is hardly scientific in nature and leads to a gross distortion of reality and to conveniently apportioning all the blame to a single commodity, namely palm oil, which is coincidentally not grown in the EU and considered as a whole to be unsustainable and the primary, if not the sole, contributor\u00a0to global deforestation,\u201d the MPOC said.<\/p>\n
It also argued that\u00a0the reference period chosen by the EU (2008 to 2016) to conduct its scientific modelling was biased and was intentionally selected to show palm oil\u2019s disproportionate growth.<\/p>\n
The EC had calculated the annual net increase of global production and the annual net increase of harvested area for palm oil during that reference period to be\u00a0at 5.1 per cent and 4.0 per cent, respectively \u2014\u00a0higher than other main biofuel feedstock.<\/p>\n
The MPOC said: \u201cIt is clear that, if all other crops were starting from very high baselines in terms of total yearly production and harvested areas (notably wheat, maize, soybean and sugar), by selecting this reference period, palm oil would have fared negatively compared to the other \u2018like feedstocks\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reference period should be expanded, and the area expansion could be easily calculated on the basis of the production increases of the respective crops.\u201d<\/p>\n
Furthermore, the council said, the EU\u2019s modelling failed\u00a0to take into account\u00a0the efficiency and productivity of the various crops. \u201cPalm oil has greatly increased its productivity over the years, yet this is not accounted for,\u201d it noted.<\/p>\n
The MPOC said the analysis conducted by the EU did not do justice to the fact that total acreage destined to palm oil production worldwide was still much smaller than that destined to many other crops such as maize, soybeans and wheat.<\/p>\n
\u201cA mechanism must be in place, in the modelling used by the EU, to recognise and factor in the fact that countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and others still have considerably larger forest cover than (areas) like the EU and that the fundamental problem rests in the scale of the per-capital carbon dioxide (CO2) and greenhouse gas\u00a0(GHG) emissions and in the absolute volumes of CO2 and GHG emissions of countries, including in relation to the environmental cost that crop production and expansion has,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
Under the delegated act, biofuels may only be certified as low ILUC-risk fuels if they meet criteria such as having been produced from additional feedstock obtained through \u201cadditionality measures\u201d (improvement of agricultural practices leading to, among others, a better crop yield).<\/p>\n
\u201cIn general terms, the application by the EU of a system based on \u2018additionality measures\u2019 remains unclear and appears to paradoxically place at a disadvantage those crops, such as most Malaysian palm oil, that have already achieved a high degree of efficiency and productivity (in this case, the possible further gains are limited),\u201d the MPOC said.<\/p>\n
The council asked for\u00a0greater clarity from the EC on the definition and application of the concepts of \u201cadditional measure\u201d and \u201cadditional feedstock\u201d in the draft delegated act, particularly with respect to the concepts of \u201csustainable manner\u201d and the choice of reference period as the \u201cthree-year period immediately preceding the year when the relevant additionality measure has taken effect…\u201d<\/p>\n
The MPOC considers\u00a0the latter mechanism as discriminatory vis-a-vis perennial crops, such as palm oil, that have\u00a0life-cycles of about 25 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The\u00a0adoption of the\u00a0European Commission\u2019s\u00a0(EC) draft delegated act on high indirect land-use change (ILUC) risk feedstock \u2014 which places palm oil at a competitive disadvantage against other biofuel feedstock \u2014 should be suspended, says the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC). The suspension should be\u00a0in effect until all elements of the proposed regime are \u201cclear, properly defined, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5818,12887,14441],"supplier":[2317,85],"class_list":["post-61796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-biofuel","tag-palmoil","tag-policy","supplier-european-commission","supplier-malaysian-palm-oil-council-mpoc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61796\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61796"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=61796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}