News / Battle of the biofuels as shipping takes a stand against using crops

The IMO’s Intersessional Working Group on Greenhouse Gases (ISWG-GHG 18) has become an ideological battleground, with shipping lines taking a stance against crop biofuels, one of few alternatives to fossil fuels available today.

Activist group Transport & Environment (T&E) said today some 34 million hectares – an area the size of Germany – would be needed, along with the deforestation and enormous agricultural carbon emissions associated with that, to cultivate sufficient biofuel to decarbonise shipping.

But the issue is not inherent to the use of biofuels, T&E spokesperson Sam Hargreaves told The Loadstar. Rather, it was the lack of a distinction at the IMO between crop biofuels, like palm and soy oil, and waste-derived ones, like used cooking oil.

“The IMO’s ambition for 2050 is not a bad one at all, but without an exclusion [of crop biofuels], it’s a crazy idea.”

Interests pushing for crop biofuels include Brazil and Argentina, as well as Malaysia, the world’s biggest palm oil producer.

“At least at the EU level they have excluded food crops, animal fats – but there is no global agreement,” Mr Hargreaves explained.

A switch to crop biofuels, which compete with food and feed supplies and risk a far faster depletion of available farmland, could be worse for the earth’s climate than continuing to use fossil fuels in ships. The text of FuelEU Maritime, which only pertains to the activities of vessels within Europe, describes acceptable fuels as ‘RFNBOs’ – renewable fuels of non-biological origin.

It highlights that it is necessary to avoid “a shift of crop-based biofuels from road transport to maritime transport… as road transport currently remains by far the most polluting transport sector, and maritime transport currently uses predominantly fuels of fossil origin”.

“We call on the IMO and member states to discourage the use of crop-based biofuels by ships,” said a joint statement by Hapag-Lloyd and Louis Dreyfus Armateurs.

A number of additional provisions must be in place if a switch to biofuels is to generate a real decrease in CO2 emissions. One of these has to do with how this biofuel is made. If production processes harness waste products, such as used cooking oil, agricultural run-off, and sewage, as feedstocks – the products of industrial and municipal processes which would occur at any rate – the fuels generated would be truly carbon-neutral.

Neither is shipping the only industry competing for the very limited feedstocks of waste-based biofuel.

“Used cooking oil is the only one where there’s a lot of availability,” confirmed Mr Hargreaves. “But if you compare it to the demand from aviation and shipping, the supply is not there.”

Overall, aircraft consume slightly more fuel than ships, transporting virtually all passengers and around 0.5% of the world’s cargo. In 2023, used cooking oil consumption by EU countries outstripped domestic supply by a factor of eight, leaving China and other exporters to pick up the slack. Potentially, collection of used cooking oil in Europe and the UK could double, yielding a further 800,000 tonnes of biofuel resulting in 1.9m tonnes annually; but this pales in comparison with the 10.63m tonnes which must be found by 2030.

“Ryanair alone would require all the used cooking oil in Europe,” he added.