1 US EPA Says it is Auditing Biofuel Producers' Secondhand Cooking Oil Supply

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By Leah Douglas

Aug 7 (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has actually launched investigations into the supply chains of a minimum of two renewable fuel producers amid market concerns that some might be using fraudulent feedstocks for biodiesel to secure lucrative federal government subsidies.

EPA representative Jeffrey Landis informed Reuters that the firm has actually launched audits over the past year, but declined to identify the business targeted because the investigations are ongoing.

The production of biodiesel from sustainable components, like utilized cooking oil, can earn refiners a multitude of state and federal environmental and climate subsidies, including tradable credits under a program administered by the EPA called the Renewable Fuel Standard. But worries have been that some supplies labeled as utilized cooking oil are really cheaper and less sustainable virgin palm oil, a product that is associated with logging and other ecological damage.

The issue entered into focus following a surge in used cooking oil exports from Asia in current years that experts have said involves unrealistically high volumes relative to the quantity of cooking oil utilized and recovered in the area. The European Union is also investigating feedstocks over the fraud concerns.

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

"EPA has carried out audits of renewable fuel manufacturers given that July 2023 which includes, amongst other things, an examination of the locations that utilized cooking oil utilized in sustainable fuel production was collected," he stated. "These investigations, however, are continuous and we are not able to discuss continuous enforcement investigations."

U.S. senators from farm states have required more oversight of biofuel feedstocks, stating federal agencies ought to be as rigorous in validating imports as they are auditing domestic supply chains.

"The Biden administration has created vigorous standards to validate, not simply trust, American producers, and it is important that the very same examination is used to imported feedstocks," 6 U.S. senators, led by Roger Marshall and Sherrod Brown, composed in a June 20 letter to federal agencies.

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