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Article

The Green Mirage: The EU’s Complex Relationship with Palm Oil Biodiesel in the Context of Environmental Narratives and Global Trade Dynamics

by
Keith Waters
1,
Suleyman O. Altiparmak
2,*,
Shade T. Shutters
3 and
Cameron Thies
2
1
Schar School, George Mason University, Arlington, VA 22201, USA
2
James Madison College, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48825, USA
3
School of Complex Adaptive Systems, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Energies 2024, 17(2), 343; https://doi.org/10.3390/en17020343
Submission received: 26 December 2023 / Revised: 5 January 2024 / Accepted: 9 January 2024 / Published: 10 January 2024
(This article belongs to the Section A4: Bio-Energy)
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Abstract

:
In the early 2000s, biofuels like biodiesel and bioethanol were seen as renewable alternatives to petroleum, driven by rising crude oil prices and environmental concerns. Palm oil became a key biodiesel raw material, turning the European Union (EU) into a major importer. However, sustainable palm oil concerns emerged in the EU in 2014, leading to trade disputes and import restrictions, with a goal to phase out palm oil biodiesel by 2030. This research explores the EU’s palm oil biodiesel policy impact, focusing on key producers, EU imports (crude and refined palm oil, biodiesel), the EU’s role in the global biodiesel network, and alignment with a green narrative. Analyzing trade data, we find that, despite concerns, the EU has not significantly reduced palm oil-related imports, highlighting the market’s complex relationship to policy. This suggests that the EU’s commitment to environmentally sustainable economic development may not align with market stakeholders’ preferences, emphasizing the complex interdependencies between the global biodiesel market and policy areas like sustainability, economy, energy, and environment.

1. Introduction

Among the many pressing issues in the world today, climate change is among the most prominent. A key driver implicated in climate change is the increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly CO2 emissions. A total of 37% of global CO2 emissions in 2021 were attributable to transportation [1], a sector still highly dependent on fossil fuels, with dependence on oil alone being 91% in 2021 [1]. This dependence on fossil fuels not only contributes to increasingly detrimental environmental issues, but also negatively impacts energy security (e.g., depletion, accessibility). For these reasons, countries have increasingly sought alternatives that will reduce their dependence on oil and other fossil fuels. In the early 2000s, as crude oil prices jumped and oil-related environmental problems grew, biofuels (e.g., biodiesel, bioethanol) came to be seen as a key renewable alternative. By 2003, the European Union (EU) ruled that biofuels must eventually make up 5.75% of the bloc’s transport fuel [2]. Similar requirements were also implemented in the United States (US) through policy acts in 2005 and 2007 [3].
With this new demand for the production of biodiesel, demand also grew for one of its key raw materials—palm oil. Palm oil production has been shown to provide economic benefits to producing countries as well as reducing their meat and crude oil imports [4]. A diverse set of end uses for palm oil helps to maintain its importance in global trade and provides producers with stable economies [5]. The EU in particular, with numerous end uses, has historically been a major buyer of palm oil. In 2018, 65% of the palm oil imported into the EU was burned as energy, including 53% for biodiesel and 12% for heating and electricity [6]. However, the EU’s concerns about sustainable palm oil production became concrete for the first time with the trade dispute in 2014 [7] and it was followed by further import restrictions and increasing regulations, although there has not been an entire ban of the import. According to the current plan, the EU aims to phase out palm oil biodiesel by 2030 [8,9].
This research examines the impact of phasing out palm oil use in the EU and explores the implications for the EU in this context. We focus on the EU because of its importance in the global market (i.e., crude palm oil, refined palm oil, and biodiesel) and because of its position in the top three export destinations of palm oil and biodiesel. While sustainability concerns were a large part of the impetus for EU policy changes, such considerations are beyond the scope of this study. Instead, we examine the dynamics of the EU’s position in the global biodiesel network and what place the EU occupies in this market. In short, this study provides an EU-relative context. After assessing the degree to which the palm oil-centered trade dispute [10] is reflected in the trade data, the EU green narrative implications are then drawn from this. The need for a green narrative is because environmental concerns are included in the concept of sustainability, which is the policy that pushes people to move away from palm oil biodiesel, and the EU tries to export it.
This research highlights that despite the global concerns surrounding the environmental impacts of palm oil production and ongoing trade disputes led by the EU, the EU has not reduced its imports of crude palm oil, refined palm oil, or biodiesel. The increasing import and consumption of these products within the EU, which have been driven by a combination of factors, including rising global oil prices in the early 2000s and the EU’s commitment to environmentally friendly policies and regulations, still exist. Our results show that the argument for environmentally sustainable economic development, proposed by the green leader EU elites, is not borne out by EU market stakeholders. Despite trade disputes and increasing regulatory restrictions, the complexity of this market, which is intertwined with sustainability, economy, energy, and environment dynamics, has contributed to the EU’s continued dependence on palm oil biodiesel-related imports. Our findings challenge the prevailing notion of the EU as a green leader and emphasize the complex interplay between sustainability, economy, energy, and environmental dynamics in the global biodiesel market.
In the next section, a literature review related to palm oil and palm oil biodiesel is provided. This section reflects both the characteristics of biodiesel compared to fossil fuels, the environmental and economic dynamics concerning the palm oil market, and the trade disputes around palm oil biodiesel. Section 3 explains the data sources and various steps to clean and process the data. Section 4 provides results in line with the above-mentioned. Finally, these findings are discussed in Section 5. The findings of the research are discussed to find implications of EU politics within the framework of the EU green narrative, EU green leadership and palm oil market dynamics.

2. Palm Oil Biodiesel Market Dynamics and the EU

Palm oil biodiesel has been discussed from various perspectives. Since it is an alternative fuel to fossil fuels, first of all, its renewable fuel characteristic is emphasized [11,12,13]. Biodiesel provides almost the same functionality as fossil fuels, but it is more environmentally friendly since it is easily biodegradable and a nontoxic alternative fuel [14]. Additionally, there is also an energy security contribution as it can reduce reliance on crude oil [15]. For example, Indonesia’s share of crude oil energy supply decreased over time [4].
In the biodiesel market, palm oil has a special place over other feedstocks such as soybean and rapeseed, given its characteristics. Above all, palm oil is the easiest to produce [12,16,17] and has a higher yield than other oils [18]. Second, it is a perennial crop, which is not like annual crops so does not need to be replanted each year. And palm has the highest oil yield in terms of oil production per hectare of plantation [18]. Finally, it needs less fertilizer, water, and pesticides for the plantation and less sunlight [12,16]. Given this, palm oil is the most heavily used vegetable oil [19]. Palm oil is an ingredient in one out of every two products available in the supermarket [20] because it can be used for various products such as food, biofuels, soaps, detergents, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics [21,22].
Despite the advantages, there are also some obstacles associated with palm oil. One area of issues revolves around labor, plantation management, and the harvesting of the fruit [11]. A second issue is the use of palm oil production in biodiesel, which also has some problems like ‘food versus fuel’, as in other biofuels’ production [23]. When it comes to food security, the issue becomes increasingly complex because a pattern is formed between local production and the global food network [21]. However, when palm oil is used for biodiesel production, the dynamics within the food market expand to the matter of a choice between food and energy. Finally, there is the issue of meeting the demands of the current generation of humans while balancing sustainability for future generations [21,24,25]. Efforts on this subject have been going on since the foundation of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which was later joined by the EU policy-based International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC), Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil System (ISPO), and Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil Standard (MSPO) in 2004. Concerns about production are significant because although biofuel consumption is more environmentally friendly than fossil fuel, GHG is released from field crops during the production phase [26]. Also, deforestation, which would trigger biodiversity considerations, is also an outcome of palm oil biodiesel production [22,27,28]. These considerations are reflected in the European Parliament [29] resolution on palm oil and the deforestation of rainforests. Overall, palm oil biodiesel has advantages and disadvantages environmentally, economically, and socially.
Apart from the advantages and disadvantages of palm oil, the distribution of suppliers is reliant on essentially two countries, with Indonesia and Malaysia producing approximately 85% of the total global palm oil supply [30]. The reality that two countries produce the vast majority of the supply impacts numerous dynamics, given that countries aim to increase palm oil production, a topic that has received ample attention in academic literature [24,31]. Both countries officially started using palm oil as an alternative renewable energy source in 2006 [31]. Since then, blend rates (this is the rate of biodiesel and diesel in fuel. For example, B30 means 30% biodiesel and 70% diesel) have been increased, with certain revisions and government incentives [31,32]. Currently, the B30 in Indonesia and the B10 in Malaysia are mandated. Indonesia plans to increase its 40% blending mandate [33], while Malaysia aims for 20% [34]. The ambitious attitude of these two countries, which dominate the palm oil market, necessitates researching the market dynamics and trade network of palm oil biodiesel.
Finally, there have been trade wars over palm oil biodiesel because of environmental concerns. Major powers such as the EU and the US, which took steps directly to focus on biofuels, revised their policies after 2003 within the wider framework of renewable energy. For example, the EU adopted the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) [35] that promotes the use of biofuels by setting a 10% target for the use of renewable energy in the transport sector by 2020. This was perhaps the peak moment for triggering the global palm oil biodiesel trade. However, in the next period, two trade disputes were sent to the World Trade Organization (WTO), in 2014 (the year the EU build ILUC directive [36]) and 2019 (following this, the EU adopted the delegated act that defines palm oils an unsustainable fuel [37]). Both disputes were resolved in favor of Indonesia. Although Malaysia was not a direct party to these disputes, it was involved in the WTO process [10]. The first of these was about the additional taxes that the EU applied to biodiesel producers, while the second was based on phasing out palm oil for biofuels, which was emphasized in RED II of 2018 that aims to achieve 40% renewable energy use via solar and wind energy in 2030, because of environmental considerations. In RED II [8,9], covering the period from 2021 to 2030, the EU decided to give member states the option to end the use of crop-based biofuels because of the environmental considerations mentioned. It was followed by the RED III of 2023 [38], which aims to increase the share of renewable energy in the EU’s overall energy consumption to 42.5% by 2030. The 5.5% target for advanced biofuels in RED III was much higher than the 3.5% target in RED II. Despite giving member states the option to phase out crop-based biofuels in the long-run, the EU required member states to limit the use of palm oil for biofuel for the period from 2021 to 2023 at the level of 2019.
At this point, it is necessary to mention the fact that the EU has long viewed itself as a role model for green policies [39]. Sustainable development, climate change, environmental considerations, and green economy have been among the main emphases of the EU. While the ‘Green Europe’ narrative exists, it is argued that while the EU tries to lead other actors in international climate politics, it does not have an internally coherent structure [39]. Further still, these policies are perhaps primarily intended for the purposes of common identity and the creation of solidarity [40]. As seen in the study on the sustainability discourse in the European Green Deal 2020 (EGD) [41], this may be a policy created by the elites that does not have full support among citizens and market stakeholders. In the study focused on sustainability discourse in EU green strategies [42], the focus only on resource efficiency was revealed through critical discourse. Whatever the reason, the EU sees itself as the pioneer and guide of green policy in the world and shapes its policies accordingly.
The EU’s anti-dumping duties on biodiesel have also been applied to imports from Argentina and the US. Like the EU, the US is also not an optional market because Indonesian palm oil biodiesel does not meet the US Renewable Fuel Standards. Therefore, despite difficulties such as labor shortages, Malaysia tries to reach places where Indonesia cannot reach. As a final consideration, India and China are both recording huge increases in the demand for vegetable oil, including palm oil. Thus, even with notable increases in global palm oil production, it is expected to rise even more [34].
To frame the next section, sustainable palm oil can be viewed from a global network flow perspective [20]. While the palm oil global production network has been investigated [43], and trade networks between actors in the small-scale palm oil market of rural Ghana have been researched [44], the link has not yet been made between the trade network and palm oil biodiesel. To accomplish this, a distinction should be made between crude palm oil and refined palm oil, because the upstream palm oil commodity (i.e., palm oil plantation) provides lower value than the downstream products such as biodiesel [25]. Indonesia built nine new biorefineries between 2010 and 2019, bringing its total to 31 [45].
A study aiming to reveal the palm oil biodiesel trade network should do this both within a certain historical sequence and by dividing the palm oil supply chain into parts, as crude palm oil, refined palm oil, and biodiesel. In order to do that, considerable palm oil producers, the EU’s imports related to this market (i.e., crude palm oil, refined palm oil, and biodiesel) and the top three export destinations of palm oil and biodiesel will now be given. Such an inquiry also requires reflecting on the EU’s overall position in the global biodiesel network. Afterwards, the findings may lead us to political implications within the framework of the points discussed in the EU green narrative and green leadership.
To summarize, palm oil is both the most popular vegetable oil and has been used widely as a component for biofuel. However, broader environmental concerns such as deforestation have driven the EU to reconsider the use of palm oil as a biodiesel. This has resulted in REDS II, which required member states to cap their consumption. Here, we look at the global trade ramifications of the EU’s change in policy. We examine both the impact of EU imports of palm oil and biodiesel, as well as changes in export markets for the top producers of palm oil and biodiesel. It would make sense that if the EU followed through on its stated policy stance, imports would decline and top exporters would find new markets for their commodities. Through a meticulous analysis of trade data and market trends, we demonstrate how, despite growing environmental concerns and trade disputes, the EU continues to maintain high levels of palm-oil-related imports.

3. Data and Methods

The data used in this analysis are traded commodity data from the United Nations (UN) Comtrade database. The Comtrade data are directional trade data that date back to 1962 [46]. Data are annual and are coded using Harmonized System 17 (HS-17). Three commodities are used for the analysis: vegetable oils—palm oil and its fractions, crude, not chemically modified (HS-151110); Vegetable oils—palm oil and its fractions, other than crude, whether or not refined, but not chemically modified (HS-151190); and biodiesel and mixtures thereof, not containing or containing less than 70% by weight of petroleum oils or oils obtained from bituminous minerals (HS-3826). While trade weight is used to avoid fluctuations in the value of commodities, note that refined palm oil is likely much lighter than crude, so the instance where it is aggregated skews the data towards crude to an extent. This appears not to alter the analysis and is preferable to value, which fluctuates notably.
Several transformations are performed on the data. First, as country-level data are supplied to the UN, the EU is aggregated from individual countries in the EU to a single entity. Second, data are supplied to the UN by reporting countries with numerous discrepancies regarding the trade that occurred between trading partners. Given that such discrepancies are inherent in the data, the average of reported data is used if two data points are supplied and the only reported data point is used in the case that only one partner supplied data. For example, If the U.S. and Germany trade coal with one another and both report a number to the UN, then the average of these trade values is taken. However, if only Germany reports trade, then the value reported by Germany is used. Note that this excludes trading partners where neither country reports data to the UN. Finally, aggregated or miscellaneous regions such as “World” or “not elsewhere specified” are dropped from the dataset.
The method for examining the global trade dynamics of palm oil is through descriptive analysis of the Comtrade data. Descriptive analysis, however, is carried out through two means. First, temporal global trade dynamics are examined to determine the largest exporters as well as temporal shifts among these exporters. Second, the global trade dynamics are recast as a network and descriptively analyzed using in-degree and weighted in-degree measures from traditional network statistics.

4. Results

The global trade of palm oil has grown rapidly over the past 20 years (see Figure 1). In 1989, the world traded 5.2 billion kg of palm oil. The palm oil trade increased slowly to 14.5 billion kg in 2003 before increasing rapidly to 45.4 billion kg in 2013, and slowing again to increase to a peak of 51.5 billion in 2019. After the 2019 peak, the total palm oil trade declined modestly to 47.5 in 2020, perhaps due to pandemic-related trade impacts. While the top five exporters of palm oil in 2021 were Indonesia, Malaysia, EU 27, Guatemala, and Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Malasia export the vast majority of palm oil. In 2021, Indonesia and Malaysia exported a combined 38.9 billion kg of palm oil, accounting for 84.7% of all palm oil trade. The countries in the EU 27, in comparison, exported just 2.0 billion kg of palm oil, while Guatemala and Papua New Guinea exported roughly 0.7 billion kg.
While biodiesel has only been categorized in the UN Comtrade data since 2012, it has remained relatively stable over this period. The total annual biodiesel trade between 2012 and 2021 has ranged from 281 to 486 billion kg, with the median being 355.5 billion kg. The top three exporters in 2021 were EU 27, USA, Turkey, China, and Malaysia. While the EU 27 is the largest exporter, it does not dominate global trade as Indonesia and Malaysia do with palm oil.
As has been mentioned, the EU has stated its intention to reduce the usage of biodiesel and palm oil. Directly examining the imports of crude palm oil, refined palm oil, and biodiesel reveals that the EU is not reducing the imports of any of the three. EU imports of crude palm oil increased from less than 1 billion kg of palm oil in 2000 to 5.5 billion kg of crude palm oil in 2015 before stabilizing to between 3.3 billion and 5.4 billion kg through 2021 (see Figure 2). EU imports of refined palm oil increased from 1.4 billion kg in 2000 to 2.6 billion kg in 2007, stabilized through 2012, and have then continued to increase to 4.7 billion kg in 2017. While refined palm oil imports declined slightly through 2020, they rebounded to 4.2 billion kg in 2021. Despite the rebound, the EU requirement that member states limit the use of palm oil for biofuel for the period from 2021 to 2023 at the level of 2019 appears to have made an impact, as imports leveled off. Finally, EU imports of biodiesel have increased dramatically since imports began being recorded in 2012. In 2012, the EU imported 6.4 billion kg of biodiesel. Beginning in 2016, imports began to increase rapidly through 2021, when the EU imported 15.9 billion kg of biodiesel. Despite the stated intention of the EU to reduce its imports of palm oil and biodiesel, palm oil imports have remained relatively level from 2012 through 2021 and biodiesel imports have soared.
As mentioned, the EU’s trade dispute on biodiesel resulted in Indonesia having access to the EU market while Malaysia and Argentina lost access. To examine the implications of the court ruling on both palm oil and biodiesel, the top three export destinations for each commodity for Indonesia, Malaysia, and Argentina are shown in Table 1. For Malaysia and Indonesia, the top export destinations are ranked by exports in 2021 and the sum of exports from 2010 to 2021 for Argentina. The sum of exports for Argentina is used as its reporting to UN Comtrade is intermittent over the period. For each country, for both commodities, the EU is a top importer. That is, despite the court rulings, the EU remains a top destination for biodiesel exported from both Malaysia and Argentina. After the 2015 ruling, Malaysian exports of biodiesel initially dropped from 360.1 million kg in 2015 to 249.7 million kg in 2016 before rebounding to 358 million kg in 2017 and increasing to roughly 420.0 million kg from 2018 to 2021, despite a spike to 722.5 kg in 2019. In fact, Argentinian biodiesel exports to the EU increased from 12.5 million kg in 2015 to 1389.5 million kg in 2018, and remained in the range of 895.0 million kg to 1438.5 million kg through 2021. Finally, Malasia has continued to export palm oil to the EU, 3.4 billion kg in 2021, with notable annual fluctuations.
Finally, to get a sense of the EU’s overall position in the global biodiesel network, the biodiesel trade from 2012 through 2021 is summed along trade lines and converted to a network (see Figure 3). Over the 9-year period from 2012 through 2021, the EU was the dominant node in the world biodiesel trade network. The average in-degree was 23.3. Stated another way, the number of exporting countries that importing countries imported from was 23.3. The EU over this period had the highest in-degree, of 168, importing some level of biodiesel from 168 countries. For comparison, the USA had an in-degree of 90, Canada an in-degree of 83, and the UK an in-degree of 81. While the EU had the highest in-degree, it had the second highest weighted in-degree. The weighted in-degree is simply the total imports over the period. India had the highest weighted in-degree at 286.5 billion, followed by the EU at 284.0 billion and China at 231.4 billion. Given that the EU increased biodiesel imports from 2015 through 2021, its importance increased in later years.

5. Discussion

Directly examining the imports of crude palm oil, refined palm oil, and biodiesel reveals that despite the increasing emphasis on the danger of palm oil production and trade disputes around them, led by the EU, the EU is not reducing the imports of any of the three. The import and consumption of both palm oil and palm oil biodiesel in the EU continues to increase. The EU is the center of the global biodiesel network. Our findings challenge the prevailing notion of the EU as a green leader and emphasize the complex interplay between sustainability, economy, energy, and environmental dynamics in the global biodiesel market.
This study does not look at whether palm oil production is sustainable or not. However, the findings of the study support the argument that the EU, which has seen itself as the ‘leader’ of the fight against climate change since the 1980s [39,47], is essentially trying to create a myth as an identity-builder [40]. Green Europe as a foundational but not functional myth is strongly observed in this study’s results. The environmental narrative, which was later included in the discourse on sustainability in the Lisbon strategy [42], represents the coherent and common identity of the EU image as a myth. The time when this debate increased the most was with the EGD, whose discourse shaped the political and institutional power of the EU [41]. This discourse is reflected in regulations, but not in economic data because the EU’s emphasis is on economic competitiveness, rather than environmentally sustainable economic development mindful of planetary boundaries [42]. Resource-efficiency-oriented market understanding is leading rather than a solely environmentally focus.
It seems that the insincerity of EU decision-makers cannot be the reason for the finding of this study because trade disputes are real. Indonesian stakeholders state that they are seriously affected by increasing regulations on palm oil imports (e.g., EU Regulation No. 1169/2011) and some trade restrictions, which also have an impact on biodiesels, as seen in the RED II [48]. This also reflected on bilateral cooperation between the EU and Indonesia. In the development cooperation blue book agreed between the two parties [49], there are highlights such as ‘sustainable development goals’, ‘mitigating climate change’, and ‘the implementation of National Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement, forestry, and environment, including sustainable palm oil and social forestry’ promoted by the EU. Relations between the EU and Indonesia on such development and sustainability-oriented issues are based on a long process. Such collaborations have continued even in the phase-out stage of palm oil biodiesel [50]. The important aspect of this is that it eliminates the idea that international political conflict between two parties could cause this type of trade dispute. What actually happened is that the oil price crisis at the beginning of the millennium and environmental concerns combined to support the use of biofuels, but now policies shaped solely by environmental concerns have not found any response from EU stakeholders.
This is a very complex market which is connected to sustainability, economy, energy, and environment. Although palm oil production is dangerous in terms of biodiversity and even feedstocks used for biodiesel production have a much higher total carbon intensity, the use of palm oil biodiesel is more environmentally friendly than crude oil in terms of climate change. And it creates a safer market in terms of energy and thereby economy. For this reason, ‘sustainable palm oil’ and palm oil biodiesel, which involves a serious trade dispute between the EU and Indonesia [49], neither reflect on the trade of related products between the two parties nor undermine the power of the EU in the global biodiesel market. The biofuels-friendly policies that were initially triggered by the EU’s decision-makers do not exist now.

6. Conclusions

This study reveals that despite the EU’s green leadership rhetoric and concerns over palm oil’s environmental impact, the EU continues to import crude palm oil, refined palm oil, and biodiesel. This suggests that the EU’s green leadership might be more of an identity-building myth than a steadfast commitment. The EU’s focus on economic competitiveness over pure environmental sustainability is evident in its trade practices. Despite trade disputes and restrictions, the EU maintains development cooperation and sustainability-oriented collaborations with palm oil-producing countries like Indonesia, even as it plans to phase out palm oil biodiesel by 2030. In summary, the EU’s stance on palm oil imports reflects the complexity of global trade, where economic considerations often outweigh environmental concerns. This study emphasizes the need for a more nuanced approach to sustainability, recognizing the intricate factors shaping international trade and energy markets.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, S.O.A.; methodology, K.W.; software, K.W.; validation, K.W.; formal analysis, K.W.; investigation, S.O.A.; resources, S.O.A.; data curation, K.W.; writing—original draft preparation, K.W. and S.O.A.; writing—review and editing, S.T.S. and C.T.; visualization, K.W.; supervision, S.T.S. and C.T.; project administration, S.T.S. and C.T.; funding acquisition, S.T.S. and C.T. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award number FA9550-21-1-0140. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Air Force.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. This data, which is subscription required, can be found here: https://comtradeplus.un.org/ (accessed on 25 December 2023).

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Figure 1. Exports of top palm oil and biodiesel exporters. The palm oil exports of Indonesia and Malaysia far surpass those of any other palm oil exporters. The EU is the largest exporter of biodiesel, and there was been little development in international biodiesel trade flows from 2012 through 2021.
Figure 1. Exports of top palm oil and biodiesel exporters. The palm oil exports of Indonesia and Malaysia far surpass those of any other palm oil exporters. The EU is the largest exporter of biodiesel, and there was been little development in international biodiesel trade flows from 2012 through 2021.
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Figure 2. EU palm oil and biodiesel imports. While EU crude palm oil imports have levelled off since 2013, refined palm oil imports increased through 2017 before levelling off. Biodiesel imports, in contrast, have increased rapidly. Note that biodiesel was not classified in Comtrade data prior to 2012.
Figure 2. EU palm oil and biodiesel imports. While EU crude palm oil imports have levelled off since 2013, refined palm oil imports increased through 2017 before levelling off. Biodiesel imports, in contrast, have increased rapidly. Note that biodiesel was not classified in Comtrade data prior to 2012.
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Figure 3. Biodiesel trade network. The EU is the most central node in the international biodiesel trade network, with the highest number of source countries and the second highest weighted in-degree.
Figure 3. Biodiesel trade network. The EU is the most central node in the international biodiesel trade network, with the highest number of source countries and the second highest weighted in-degree.
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Table 1. Top 3 export destinations of palm oil and biodiesel for Indonesia (IDN), Malayasia (MAL), and Argentina (ARG).
Table 1. Top 3 export destinations of palm oil and biodiesel for Indonesia (IDN), Malayasia (MAL), and Argentina (ARG).
CommodityExporterTop Importers2015201620172018201920202021
Palm Oil
(Billion kg)		IDNChina3.52.33.23.65.23.84.5
India5.75.37.26.24.74.63.2
EU 273.63.23.83.53.43.42.8
MALIndia3.72.92.02.14.12.43.4
China2.11.31.51.42.02.21.4
EU 272.11.81.51.71.91.81.4
Biodiesel
(Million kg)		IDNEU 2723.442.9157.6803.2645.894.595.2
China11.71.00.0655.3621.99.082.4
Peru25.616.7139.645.40.00.030.8
MALEU 27360.1249.7358.0422.1722.5436.7418.0
China1.92.71.8112.3159.526.261.8
UK0.05.00.05.00.00.027.3
ARG *EU 2712.50.0307.71839.51106.1895.01438.5
USA626.41479.2967.70.00.00.00.0
Peru203.3153.046.723.80.00.00.0
* Argentina’s exports are ranked on the sum of exporters from 2010 to 2021 due to intermittent exporting/reporting.
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Waters, K.; Altiparmak, S.O.; Shutters, S.T.; Thies, C. The Green Mirage: The EU’s Complex Relationship with Palm Oil Biodiesel in the Context of Environmental Narratives and Global Trade Dynamics. Energies 2024, 17, 343. https://doi.org/10.3390/en17020343

AMA Style

Waters K, Altiparmak SO, Shutters ST, Thies C. The Green Mirage: The EU’s Complex Relationship with Palm Oil Biodiesel in the Context of Environmental Narratives and Global Trade Dynamics. Energies. 2024; 17(2):343. https://doi.org/10.3390/en17020343

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Waters, Keith, Suleyman O. Altiparmak, Shade T. Shutters, and Cameron Thies. 2024. "The Green Mirage: The EU’s Complex Relationship with Palm Oil Biodiesel in the Context of Environmental Narratives and Global Trade Dynamics" Energies 17, no. 2: 343. https://doi.org/10.3390/en17020343

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