The US Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) has urged the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to step up monitoring and verification of imported used cooking oil (UCO) feedstock under the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS).
According to CARB data on fuel consumption in California, usage of biomass-based diesel (BBD) produced from UCO doubled from 2019 to 2023, while usage of BBD produced from tallow tripled, with some industry sources raising concerns these feedstocks could be of questionable origin and content, the RFA said on 25 November.
“Many biofuel market participants and other observers have expressed concerns about the legitimacy of imported ‘waste’ feedstocks and have questioned whether some volumes of UCO, in particular, may contain palm oil and/or other incorrectly labelled fats, oils and greases,” RFA chief economist Scott Richman wrote.
“These concerns have been heightened in recent months as Indonesia and Malaysia, which jointly account for nearly 85% of world palm oil production, have emerged alongside China as leading origins of UCO imported into the US.”
An influx of foreign feedstock had suppressed demand and prices for domestically-produced feedstocks such as distillers corn oil, which was produced by the ethanol industry, the RFA said.
The impact extends beyond the LCFS programme, according to the RFS.
Significant volumes of imported waste-based BBD, along with BBD produced domestically from imported UCO and tallow (and consumed in California) were also being used to satisfy conventional renewable fuel volume obligations under the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), undermining demand for ethanol and, particularly, its use in higher blends like E15 and E85, the association said.
CARB should require BBD producers to conduct chemical analysis on batches of imported UCO and tallow and provide associated documentation to determine the nature of the feedstocks and that the resulting BBD qualified for the carbon intensity score it received under the LCFS, Richman added.
