After Palm Oil, Activists Aim at Banning Soy Oil for Use in Biofuels

by Sean Goulding Carroll (EURACTIV.com) The European biofuels industry has hit back at NGO allegations that the use of soy oil is driving deforestation in the Amazon, emphasising that soy imported into the bloc can legally not come from deforested land.

A new report by the environmental NGO Transport & Environment (T&E) found that the increase in demand for soy, a crop used to produce biodiesel, is encouraging the conversion of natural land into industrial farmland in Brazil.

“The expansion of soy farming contributes to bringing an entire ecosystem to the brink of collapse. The EU adds to the demand for this very commodity by increasing its use in its biofuels mix,” states the report.

Vast swathes of the Amazon rainforest, a vital carbon-sink sometimes referred to as the ‘lungs of the planet’, have been converted for cattle grazing and to grow crops in recent years, with 2021 reaching a 15-year high for deforestation.

This destruction has had a devastating effect on indigenous people living in the amazon, as well as native animals. The jaguar, for example, has lost half its original habitat, primarily to farmland conversion.

“The Brazilian Amazon is being razed, bringing the earth’s lungs to the tipping point,” said Maik Marahrens, a biofuels campaigner with T&E.

“Europe’s governments and the EU must decide to give the Amazon a chance and end the use of soy biofuels. They did it for palm, why not for soy?” he added.

T&E has long campaigned for an end to EU support for crop-based biofuels, with soy a particular target of criticism.

In response, the biofuels industry has sought to disassociate activities in Europe with the destruction of the amazon, pointing to the limited amount of soy imported into the bloc and the sustainability criteria that imports must adhere to.

Under EU law, biofuel feedstocks must be certified as grown in areas that were not subject to deforestation since 2008.

“This logic that you can blame a biofuel policy in Europe that has mostly European raw materials and waste and residues for something that is happening in the Amazon, the correlation is just not there,” André Paula Santos, public affairs director with the European Biodiesel Board (EBB), told EURACTIV.

“There’s a lot of sustainability criteria that reinforces the fact that if you use [soy] for biodiesel, it’s probably the most sustainable use,” he added.

The European Parliament has proposed a ban on soy for biofuels under the revised Renewable Energy Directive, putting it on the same footing as palm oil.

However, this provision must be agreed to by member states before becoming legally binding, with negotiations ongoing.

Under Parliament plans, the ban on both soy and palm oil for biofuels would be enacted from the moment the legislation comes into effect. At present, the ban on palm oil-derived biofuels would not come into full effect until 2030.

But the EBB argues that a ban could actually backfire, leading to the EU’s share of the market going to nations with lower sustainability requirements.

It could also harm the EU’s ability to essentially regulate actions abroad by imposing criteria on imports into the bloc.

“The fact that the EU is putting in place deforestation regulations or strong RED certification requirements actually helps those countries to change their practices and to improve their record on deforestation,” Santos said.

“If the EU decides ‘let’s just ban it’, then it loses that regulation power that it has, because then the countries will just turn to somebody else,” he added. READ MORE