The European Commission announced on Friday that it will impose provisional duties of up to 36.4% on biodiesel imports from China.

Last December, the European Commission started investigating Chinese biodiesel dumping into the EU market. The investigation was launched after several EU-based biofuel producers raised concerns about biodiesel imports from China.

Some of these producers submitted evidence claiming that Chinese biofuel imports were priced artificially low, rendering it hard for them to compete fairly. The European Biodiesel Board (EBB) said a massive inflow of Chinese biodiesel into the EU was a result of unfair trade practices adopted by Chinese exporters.

The EBB welcomed the EU move to impose provisional duties on Chinese biodiesel imports.

“Our European businesses have been suffering for far too long under the pressure of unfairly priced Chinese imports and we are very happy to see the European Commission take action,” the president of EBB said.

“This is a step in the right direction for limiting imports of dubious used cooking oil (UCO) biofuels”, Transport & Environment (T&E) said. But the transport non-profit thinks that tariffs alone will not be enough to stop mislabelled palm oil from entering into the European market.

Palm oil is generally considered to be an unsustainable biofuel feedstock when it leads to deforestation where palm trees are grown. UCO, on the other hand, is a waste product that can be sustainable, but only when it has actually been used for cooking and is not just relabelled virgin cooking oil.

The EU’s provisional tariffs will come into effect from 16 August, but its investigation will continue until February, when definitive duties for five years could be set.

Source: ENGINE by Nithin Chandran