In France, the French National Assembly has voted to remove tax incentives for palm oil in diesel fuel as of 2020. From a fiscal perspective, French parliamentarians also decided to treat palm oil biodiesel as fossil fuel thereby making it ineligible for inclusion towards Europe´s targets for renewable energy in transport.
The French National Assembly passed the 2019 Finance Bill that amongst other things requires a phase-out of palm oil in biodiesel while at the same time, an increase in the blending volume of biofuels in transportation fuels. The minimum amount of biofuels to be blended will be increased from 2018’s 7.5 percent by energy content to 7.9 percent in 2019 and to 8.2 percent in 2020.
Two weeks ago the Norwegian Parliament decided to stop using palm oil linked to a high risk of deforestation to make biofuels. Today, the French National Assembly voted to stop tax incentives for palm oil diesel, the highest emitting biofuel on the EU market. The next stop is Brussels on February 1, 2019, which is the date by when the European Commission has to propose robust criteria to stop using high deforestation risk biofuels such as palm oil diesel, said Laura Buffet, Clean Fuels Manager at European Federation Transport & Environment (T&E), a Brussels-based NGO.
In 2017, transportation accounted for 51 percent of all the palm oil consumed in Europe and, according to T&E, palm oil biodiesel has three times the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of fossil diesel, because palm expansion drives deforestation and peatland drainage in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa.
