As the eco no longer apply to biofuels for a long time, however, more and more soy and palm oil ends up in Europe's car tanks. Environmental groups are calling for a reversal.

A palm plantation in Malaysia photo: Lim Huey Teng/reuters

epd | environmental associations in Europe are calling for the end of biofuels. These fuels are up to three times the climate of the managing Director of the German environmental aid (DUH), Sascha Müller-Kraenner said more harmful than fossil fuels, in Berlin on Tuesday. He pointed to a joint study with the Rainforest Foundation Norway. In the analysis of "Oil on the fire" investigates the impact of the biofuel boom on the earth.

Accordingly, the cultivation of biomass to use as biofuel, often with deforestation and the desertification of soils. Nevertheless, the biofuels, criticized Müller-Kraenner boomed. 90 percent of the global increase in demand for vegetable oils since 2015 is attributable to biofuels. The EU alone consumes, therefore, each year, four million liters of palm oil mixed with Biodiesel. 60 percent of the EU's imported palm oil land in the Tank.

biofuels have been promoted by the politics for a long time as a solution, said Anahita Yousefi from the Rainforest Foundation Norway: "However, as our report shows, caused the use of plants such as soy and palm oil for biofuels, massive deforestation of tropical forests and destruction of peat and to increase climate gas emissions, as well as the loss of species diversity."

In the past two decades, the increased production of Palm oil and soybean oil have led to a massive loss of tropical forest, said Yousefi. Apart from a poorly thought-out policy on Biofuels destroy the massive cultivation of oil-bearing crops, biological diversity, and conflict with the local, often indigenous population.

According to the environmental aid, the managing Director of the EU is to allow still another ten years of palm oil in Biodiesel and the use of other agricultural commodities such as soybean and rapeseed oil are not reduced. Individual EU members such as the Netherlands and Austria planned an early phase-out of biofuel production.

Germany as the largest producer of Biodiesel in the EU, the consequences, should Müller-Kraenner requested. In the year 2018, the imported palm oil accounted for 21 percent of the raw material for the biodiesel consumption in Germany.