The amount of palm oil used to make EU biodiesel increased 7% last year to reach an all-time high of 4.5M tonnes, according to new research published by Transport & Environment (T&E), on 2 July.
The NGO used data from Oil World to produce the figure.
Spain, the Netherlands and Italy accounted for 81.5% of the bloc’s palm oil biodiesel production in 2019. Spain was the largest palm oil biodiesel producer in Europe using 1.76M tonnes of palm oil in biodiesel.
The Netherlands produced 1.06M tonnes from one palm oil diesel factory and Italy produced 0.84M tonnes.
T&E also said the use of edible oils, including rapeseed, sunflower oil and soyabean oil, in biodiesel production had increased by 46% in the last 10 years from 8M tonnes in 2009 to 11.7M tonnes in 2019.
Meanwhile, the use of edible oils to make food had stagnated at around 12M tonnes/year and the use of palm oil to make everyday products such as bread, ice cream, hazelnut spread, chocolate, margarine, shampoo and detergent had dropped to an all-time low of 2.8M tonnes.
