Author: Pierre Bois d’Enghien

As the EU institutions return from their extended Christmas and New Year holiday, our Brussels sources inform us that the controversy around palm oil in 2018 looks to continue well into 2019. The EU’s progress on its Delegated Act on biofuels (including palm oil) continues, although not without difficulty, especially on the timeline. The Delegated […]

Malaysia keeps up the pressure at the WTO Malaysia has again taken the EU to task at the WTO for its approach on the Renewable Energy Directive (RED). Malaysian officials circulated a note earlier this month following the last Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) meeting. The note gets to the heart of the matter in […]

A group of researchers from Purdue University published a paper last week that claimed RSPO or sustainability certification for palm oil is no better than non-certified palm oil. The paper has received some international attention from newspapers such as the UK’s Independent, which went on to imply that all palm oil is bad. The basis […]

Norway excludes palm from biodiesel Norway has attempted to follow the lead of the European Union and exclude palm-based biodiesel in its biofuels programs. The Norwegian Parliament passed a proposal that called on the current government “to formulate a comprehensive proposal for policies and taxes in the biofuels policy in order to exclude biofuels with […]

Some questions on Greenpeace and Wilmar Palm giant Wilmar appears to be taking a harder line on Greenpeace than ever before. Wilmar’s stance comes after a group of Greenpeace activists boarded a ship off Spain, calling on food manufacturer Mondelez to drop Wilmar as a supplier. Wilmar is understandably incensed given the commitments made at the […]

Commission consults – but does it listen? Last week the European Commission held a consultation on the forthcoming Renewable Energy Directive Delegated Act, which will regulate the biofuels market in the European Union from February 2019. By design or coincidence the meeting took place at the same time the revised RED text was passed into […]

RSPO GA Preview The RSPO Roundtable and General Assembly takes place this week in Kota Kinabalu. Although much of the outreach and public activity takes place at the Roundtable meeting, the General Assembly is where the more substantial decisions are made via proposed resolutions. The revised Principles and Criteria are the most significant item on […]

The Amsterdam Declaration’s Subtle Shift The recent European Palm Oil Alliance meeting in Spain brought the Amsterdam Declaration back into the spotlight. The Amsterdam Declaration was set with great fanfare in 2015. The target set under the non-binding ‘agreement’ back then was for 100 per cent imports of certified sustainable palm oil, i.e. all palm […]

African Farmers and RED Gain Attention Our colleague Thompson Ayodele from the Initiative for Public Policy Analysis in Nigeria has highlighted the EU’s attitude towards palm oil and the new ‘risk’ framework they’re attempting to impose on palm oil. His view is in line with ours; the ‘risk’ approach is not about compliance with specific […]