Biofuels out of control? Portugal may be encouraging deforestation and fraud in the sector
For every liter of gasoline or diesel you put in, more than one liter is made from raw car and agricultural waste. This on paper; in practice, there is a double counting of the incorporation of these biofuels in the final product, with tax incentives, to promote this form of energy, neutral in carbon. That is, since the law forecast is 11%, 5.5% is the real value, on average. Still, for every ten liters of gasoline, a little more than half a liter is biofuel.
In addition to counting, the only advanced biofuels, those are doubly from raw materials of residual origin, still benefiting from exemption from the ISP. A “bonus” that stems from the fact that this type of biofuel is more sustainable (they are waste that would not be used in any other way, not competing, for example, with a food industry).
This exemption from the tax on petroleum products, in Portugal and in some other European countries, has environmental purposes, but can be an incentive for fraud. In the case of selection, there is no effective control over the composition of the advanced biofuel, which is more valuable, since the selection is based on a study and does not require a study of the product.
“I don’t believe in control by documents. Additional control is required for the economic law of the ISP, with credible evidence, such as a sample and indication of the circuit”, says Jaime Braga, secretary general of APPB – Portuguese Association of Biofuel Producers.
The sector representative highlights that one of the problems is the double use of the same document to certify a specific batch of advanced biofuel, noting that this situation has already been detected in Poland. “The same document can be used for two different clients, which do not cross data. There should be a database to prevent that, to make European fraud more difficult, but there isn’t. The vulnerability is evident.” Unlike importers, domestic producers are required to deliver a sample and are inspected for three months.
different imports
The tax benefits make advanced biofuels especially attractive from any quarter, which is already visible from the proportions: first pie at 11%, did not pass to a 74.5% biofuel share in the year quarter. On the other hand for producers, the difficulty faced by national competitors in the market is visible. Between January and March, as advanced biofuels were 44,732 cubic meters; Portuguese production stood at 11,553 m3. “This abrupt and important growth is rich”, it should deserve an acre, because being a tax benefit Jaime Braga. “It is a distortion of the system that has to be checked in a fine mesh by the authorities.”
For Nuno, from the Zero association, there are guarantees regarding the provenance and imported advances of biofuels. “Without a system that does the traceability, it is difficult to see if they are advanced or not. We have already questioned this in the past and we defend, as other European NGOs defend, that this system should be implemented to control transactions and ensure that there is no fraud, not least because many of these are imported from outside Europe.” The environmentalist still delays the transposition of the Energy Transport Directive until 2010, which dated Nov. , João Galamba, promised that the proposal would soon enter public consultation.
Palm oil: engine of deforestation
In addition to entering the Portuguese market for biofuels (less advanced, they can be made from soy with corn, barley or palm) with the seal, legislation allows certain errors that are not recommended for practices. For example, palm oil was already considered an unsustainable raw material by the European Commission in 2018, which determined the abandonment of its biofuel production, in a progressive way between 2023 and 2030.
But waste associated with palm oil production remains on the list of advanced biofuels, benefiting from such tax exemptions and serving as another incentive for palm oil production (which is behind afforestation in several countries, such as Indonesia, endangering extinction). This happens in the case of palm bunches, palm effluents and recovery oil from bleaching lands. It is true that they go to a landfill, what another problematic way, but their use helps to monetize a highly environmental view.
Portugal, in fact, last year included POME (palm oil mill effluent, a waste water resulting from the palm oil process) in the list of raw production for advanced biofuels, with rights to tax benefits. But palm oil itself was banned in the production of biofuels, also last year, with entry into force this year – the country has even shown itself to be more ambitious than the European Commission, which only demands its end over the course of the year. of this decade.
According to the European Commission, palm oil is responsible for 5% of the destruction of tropical forests (mainly in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea) and 2.6% of total deforestation.