Rotterdam flooded with counterfeit biofuels, threatening Europe’s climate agenda

A surge of fraud tied to biobased fuels imported through Rotterdam is undermining Europe’s climate goals, according to environmental organizations and experts who say Dutch authorities have little understanding of the full scale of deception.

The Dutch Emissions Authority, or NEa, which oversees the origin and sustainability of biobased fuels in the Netherlands, admits it does not know how widespread the fraud is. “We don’t know what we don’t see,” NEa director Mark Bressers told NOS. “If we keep doing what we’re doing now, it won’t end well.”

Biobased fuels, made from materials such as plants, fats or food waste, are central to European targets to cut greenhouse gases. The European Union has pledged to reduce CO2 emissions by 90 percent by 2040 compared with 1990 levels, aiming for climate neutrality by 2050. In 2024, biobased fuels accounted for 14 percent of a typical fuel tank.

In the Netherlands, more than 90 percent of biobased fuels come from waste or residual streams considered highly sustainable. Used cooking oil and palm oil mill effluent, known as POME, are particularly valued because they qualify for European subsidies and count double toward fuel companies’ sustainability goals.

But the lucrative incentives also create what Bressers called strong motives for fraud throughout the supply chain, from suppliers of raw materials to processing facilities. “There are strong incentives to commit fraud,” Bressers told NOS.

Investigations by Transport & Environment, a European environmental organization, revealed that companies are falsifying documents and mislabeling products on a massive scale. Non-sustainable materials, including virgin cooking oil and fresh palm oil, are falsely labeled as waste streams like used cooking oil and POME. Some companies mix non-sustainable products with genuine waste and then forge certificates that are supposed to guarantee the sustainability and origin of the fuels.

Environmental groups say the impact on emissions is severe. “We are emitting far more CO2 than we think,” said Nienke Onnen of the Dutch group Natuur & Milieu. “We achieve climate gains only on paper, not in practice.”

So-called counterfeit biobased fuels can be as polluting as fossil fuels. In some cases, they are even worse because palm oil is associated with deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia. This has led the European Union to partly ban palm oil in biobased fuels.

Yet much of the questionable material still reportedly enters Europe through the Netherlands. Less than 5 percent of the used cooking oil converted into fuel in the Netherlands originates domestically. The majority is imported, mainly from China. POME is not produced in the Netherlands at all and largely comes from Indonesia and Malaysia.

A 2024 analysis by Transport & Environment found that Malaysia exported three times more POME than it actually produced and imported. In 2023, the EU and United Kingdom together reported processing more than twice the estimated globally available quantity of POME.

Such discrepancies have fueled suspicion of systemic fraud in Asia, which hampers enforcement. “It is a global chain that ends here at a gas station and starts in, for example, Malaysia or Indonesia,” Bressers told NOS. “In the Netherlands, we can audit records and conduct inspections, but it is much harder to do that over there.”

Even within the Netherlands, oversight faces technical obstacles. POME and fresh palm oil cannot be distinguished chemically, making inspections nearly impossible once materials are blended. Used and unused cooking oils pose the same problem. “Our knowledge is growing, and it will have to keep growing in the coming period,” Bressers told NOS.

Natuur & Milieu remains skeptical about the NEa’s capacity to police the trade. “The NEa currently supervises only the companies based in the Netherlands,” Onnen told NOS. “We advocate for more collaboration and inspections earlier in the chain. European regulators must be able to conduct physical checks in countries outside Europe.”

Merle Kooijman, an environmental crime researcher at the University of Amsterdam, said the NEa lacks the size and resources to tackle fraud effectively. “The likelihood of getting caught is crucial to addressing crime, and right now it is far too low,” she told NOS.

Onnen warned that the unchecked fraud could erode public support for biobased fuels and broader sustainability efforts. “More and better inspections must be put in place,” she told the newspaper.