Latin America continues to lead by example, and this latest agreement between the RSPO, Solidaridad and AAK underscores the vital role of effective partnerships in driving sustainability forward. Smallholders are at the core of Mexico’s palm oil sector, and it is fundamental to strengthen our partnership with them throughout their journey towards RSPO Certification. We must ensure that the progress of the sustainable palm oil sector paves better livelihoods and economic growth for these smallholders and their communities, said Joseph D’Cruz, CEO of RSPO.

Roadmap towards RSPO certification

One of the key commitments of the agreement is a pilot project designed to assess the needs and gaps in sustainable and certified production.

It will involve the participation of 250 producers and four extraction plants. The final goal of the pilot is to elaborate a roadmap to ensure smallholders become RSPO Certified.

RSPO joins this project within the framework of the collaboration with Solidaridad in Latin America to align its strategies throughout the region by sharing knowledge, experience, and success stories to boost the sector’s transformation.

Additionally, ANIAME is a strategic partner to promote structural change and modernize the sector.

The pilot project evaluation will be carried out in two stages: first, involving the use of the Extension Solution digital tool, designed by Solidaridad Brazil and adapted by Colombia to meet the standards of independent smallholders.

This tool will measure the producer’s degree of compliance with the RSPO Standards and provide immediate results on field activities.

Second, the AAK monitoring and evaluation framework will be used to generate data on compliance with company policy.

To achieve this, topics will be evaluated at three levels:

• Prosperity: aspects such as business models, internal control systems, and good agricultural practices will be considered;
• Personnel: issues such as child labor, women’s participation, and human rights will be discussed;
• Plantation: topics such as the use of agrochemicals, deforestation, and the protection of natural areas will be addressed.

Pilot project for smallholders

The main goal of the “Getting to Know Smallholders” project, a collaboration between AAK, Solidaridad, ANIAME, and RSPO, is to evaluate and identify the conditions of small producers in the AAK supply chain in Mexico.

The project aims to identify high-impact actions and establish an effective method to promote certified production under the RSPO Independent Smallholder Standard.

This agreement represents a significant step towards sustainability and responsibility in the Mexican palm oil industry, laying the foundations for future collaborations and actions that benefit both the environment and local communities.

At Solidaridad, we believe that strategic alliances are essential to support small producers so they can work with nature in mind, said Jorge Solano, Solidaridad Project Manager.

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The location is of strategic importance due to its geographical proximity to both the forest plantations from which Eternali will purchase stumpage – the Coopmar plantations – and the larger international port, Porto de Santana, which Eternali intends to use for its international deliveries.

This land is incredibly important for us to build the hub for transshipment, storage, and drying we need for further transport to our international port. From the moment we began discussions with the Coopmar-cooperative to purchase from their large plantations in the area, we knew how critical it would be to find land around the Paru River for our logistics chain, said Andreas Forssell, CEO of Eternali.

The seller of the land is the company’s COO, Gustavo de Silveira.

In the spring of 2023, we also invested in building a road from the Coopmar plantations to the river area to validate our logistics solutions with potential customers. It is challenging to find good riverside plots in this area, and we are truly grateful that after long discussions with Gustavo, we have had the opportunity to acquire the property for Eternali, so we now can prepare the land, Andreas Forssell said.

On the property, Eternali intends to establish a logistics center with facilities for unloading incoming raw materials from the plantations via trucks, storage, and drying of raw materials, and transshipment of raw materials for transport via the Paru River to Porto de Santana.

The size of the property also allows for the potential establishment of a wood-chipping operation for biomass if needed.

The acquisition of the property is financed through an interest-free promissory note amounting to R$7.2 million (≈ US$1.34 million) which represents a discount compared to the independent valuation of the property commissioned by the company.

The board will propose that the 2024 annual general meeting approve a debt-for-equity swap for the corresponding amount.

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The 13 signatories support their respective member companies in successfully implementing the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which requires significant adjustments from suppliers, operators, and traders to meet its obligations.

The signatories back the EUDR’s goals and keep providing constructive feedback for developing the EUDR Information System.

However, companies involved in the pilot testing of the EUDR Information System in January 2024 have highlighted many gaps that still need to be addressed. They listed the requirements for a fully functional system for DG ENV services, echoed by the undersigned organizations on many occasions.

The last deforestation platform meeting, which took place on April 24, 2024, did not reassure the sector’s stakeholders, and the technical specifications of the Information System and the timeline for making it accessible to all operators and traders still raise serious concerns.

For these reasons, the signatories call for:

• A second round of testing with the business community;
• Making the API specifications ready as of May for business to prepare,
• Lifting the 25MB limitation or substantially increasing file size for uploading files as part of the due diligence statement;
• Accepting other data formats than the only GeoJson standard;
• Opening up the information system for all users as soon as possible and, at the very latest, beginning November 2024.

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The first delivery to customers will take place at the beginning of July 2024.

This is an important step for Eternali. We have always planned to evaluate the large domestic market for biomass from wood chips. After thorough analysis and effective sales efforts, we today have customer orders in place and have invested in a robust production facility with a great location and also have a highly skilled team on site, said Andreas Forssell, CEO of Eternali.

Large domestic market

The Brazilian market for woodchips is one of the largest in the world. A major contributing factor is the focus on green energy and biomass – nearly 5 percent of the country’s energy was produced from biomass in 2023.

The start-up of the chipping operation in northern Brazil means that Eternali has acquired land on the outskirts of Moju with great logistical solutions to customers both by water and by land.

Additionally, a strong woodchipper with high production capacity has been acquired and a team has been recruited to operate the business.

The first delivery of biomass will be to JBS Foods, one of the world’s largest meat producers with large operations in Brazil.

Our newly established production facility, combined with the customer relationships we have worked up for some time now, truly creates a shortcut to a huge market for us. Our production capacity for our operation in Moju is over 70,000 tonnes annually. And that’s from just one operation and woodchipper. With the customer agreements we already have as well as the ones we’re working on, we expect this acquisition to pay off within a year, said Andreas Forssell.

The new operation in Moju is close to Belém, where Eternali’s Brazilian office is located. The operation is in a geographic area with several sawmills, providing good access and a favorable price for raw materials – logging- and sawmill residues.

The new business unit including land- and machinery acquisition is financed by the company’s cash reserves.

Not only can we immediately start delivering to and invoicing customers from our Moju business, but we also have several potential customers to negotiate new agreements with, which provides good expansion opportunities in other locations where we could expand the business area and replicate the concept, ended Andreas Forssell.

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The Italian Climate Fund’s loan is provided through Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, the manager of the Fund. The Italian Government’s climate fund (Fondo Italiano per il Clima) is aimed at financing public and private projects in emerging and developing countries that contribute to the achievement of climate and environmental targets, in line with Italian international climate commitments.

It will help Eni increase the production of advanced biofuel feedstock grown in Kenya and processing capacity with the construction of new processing plants.

By partnering with IFC and the Italian Climate Fund, Eni further enhances its agrifeed stock projects in Kenya, expanding its reach to up to 200,000 small-scale Kenyan farmers over the next five years, and strengthens the country’s integration in the biofuels value chain. This cooperation fits with Eni’s model to leverage public-private partnerships to support communities, generate long-term value, and create virtuous, lasting alliances with African countries, said Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Eni.

Scale-up oilseeds production

The production of oilseeds, which is the primary feedstock, is expected to increase from 44,000 tonnes to 500,000 tonnes per year.

The project will also work with farmers, providing inputs, mechanization, logistics, certification, and training to help them produce oilseeds. These will be grown on degraded land not suitable for food production and/or grown in rotation with food crops, helping enhance soil fertility.

We welcome this first operation of the Italian Climate Fund established at the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security and managed by Cassa Depositi e Prestiti. This first operation, in line with the inspiring principles of the Mattei Plan, captures two major priorities: investing in the strategic biofuels supply chain, which is decisive for the future of transportation, and addressing the growth of Kenya’s agricultural sector with an intervention of undoubted socio-environmental impact, strengthening resilience to climate change, said Gilberto Pichetto, Italy’s Minister of the Environment and Energy Security.

Global biofuel demand has increased by nearly 6 percent annually for the last five years, as the transport industry looks for solutions to decarbonize.

In a net zero by 2050 scenario, the use of biofuels in transportation is expected to more than double to 9 percent by 2030.

While the production of sustainable biofuels is currently more expensive than traditional fuels, costs are expected to fall as more capacity is built up and technology advances.

This new investment will support these efforts.

Develop Kenyan biofuel value chain

IFC will also provide advisory services that will support the development of the advanced biofuel value chain in Kenya, including through the promotion of good agricultural practices and the professionalization of farmer aggregators.

All of Eni’s biofuel feedstock will receive International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC), a globally recognized scheme for biofuels with rigorous environmental, social, and economic sustainability standards, audited across the entire supply chain.

The success of the project can open up opportunities for replication elsewhere in Africa.

This project marks the dawn of a new industry for Kenya, an industry where Kenya could become a world leader. Producing biofuels will not only help decarbonize our transportation system, it will also generate income for farmers and create jobs along the value chain. We’re proud to partner with a company like Eni, which is leading the efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of the transport industry, said Makhtar Diop, Managing Director, IFC.

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Last year, Re-Match opened its second factory in Tiel in the Netherlands, and more recently, its third facility in Erstein outside of Strasbourg in France.

According to Kasper Thomsen, Operations Director at Geminor, this development is the basis for the expanded cooperation between Re-Match and Geminor.

We have for a decade assisted Re-Match within logistics, managing transport and export permits (TFS) for old artificial turf pitches that are worn out. We have also assisted with offtake for the residual plastics that cannot be recycled. We will in the coming year provide more volumes of up to 10-year-old artificial turf from Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and other EU countries to the new recycling factories in Tiel and Erstein. There is a growing number of European artificial turfs that need to be diverted from landfills, making this a valued assignment and partnership for Geminor, said Kasper Thomsen.

Old turfs become new products

Re-Match offers an environmentally sustainable recycling process and has recycled more than 160,000 tonnes of waste turfs during its 11 years in operation.

The output from the recycling factories consists of dry and sieved materials that are 99 percent clean and ready to be reused in products within automotive and furniture – but also in new artificial turfs.

We have been partners since both companies were quite modest in size, and we have grown together within the recycling industry. Currently, Re-Match needs well-functioning cooperation to deal with the big challenges that old artificial turfs represent today, and we are therefore very pleased to have Geminor as a partner in this growing recycling operation, said Dennis Andersen, Founder of Re-Match,

He is pleased to see the cooperation with Geminor being expanded.

Every year, Europe needs to replace 4,500 artificial turfs, which constitutes about 1 million tonnes of waste. At present, Re-Match can handle about 620 of these artificial turfs. We hope to increase our capacity in the time to come but there will still be an urgent need to increase the material recycling of artificial turfs within the EU, concluded Dennis Andersen.

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Indigo Ag will produce the data required for tax credit compliance, including data collection, verification, and analysis of eligible practices in GREET and other clean fuel calculators.

This level of data collection will enable RTE to maximize benefits from clean fuel markets across the US and Canada, starting with the 45Z tax credit in January 2025.

Red Trail Energy is a leader in fuel decarbonization and we are looking forward to working with leading companies like Indigo Ag as our sustainable biofuels partner. Indigo Ag’s science-backed MRV capabilities will ensure we can receive all of the benefits from clean fuel market tax crediting programs and share those benefits with growers doing the hard work on the ground said Jodi Johnson, CEO of Red Trail Energy.

Avail of 45Z – Clean Fuel Production Credit

RTE will be amongst the first ethanol producers to take advantage of the Clean Fuel Production Credit, or 45Z, in January 2025, utilizing 2024 crops.

45Z will pay 2 cents per gallon for every carbon intensity (CI) point reduction below the minimum threshold and will be the first clean fuels program to enable the generation of credits from lower CI agricultural feedstock in a meaningful way. Sustainable farming practices like cover crops or no-till, have the potential to lower ethanol CI scores by more than 20 points.

Indigo Ag’s full stack of capabilities to generate carbon assets from row-crop agriculture has been in operation for six years. It has helped some of the world’s largest companies make progress against their climate goals following stringent policy guidelines for carbon credit offsets, scope 3 emissions, and water conservation.

These capabilities will be used to help RTE assess its supply chain and leverage the CI of its feedstock draw areas to help maximize 45Z tax credit generation.

Indigo Ag has all of the capabilities in science, policy, and technology to offer a proven solution that connects physical crops with sustainability attributes throughout the agricultural supply chain, ensuring real environmental impacts with the highest data quality standards. We look forward to working with Red Trail Energy through the dynamic biofuels environment to ensure they capture all of the benefits available to them from low-carbon biofuels programs, said Dean Banks, President and CEO of Indigo Ag.

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The pilot run aimed to evaluate the potential of chemical recycling beyond plastic waste to broaden the pool of waste streams that could be processed into high-quality products.

Just as with hard-to-recycle plastic waste, a large amount of tyres end up in landfills or incineration at the end of their life cycle.

The composition of tyres as a mix of several materials makes them difficult to recycle with mechanical recycling methods.

Hence, there is a strong case for using chemical recycling to help keep valuable materials in circulation – and Scandinavian Enviro Systems has developed a pyrolysis technology for extracting carbon black and oil from end-of-life tyres (ELT).

The beauty of chemical recycling is that it can process hard-to-recycle plastic waste. But it’s not limited to that. With discarded tyres currently facing a fate similar to plastic waste, we consider chemical recycling a valid addition when it comes to changing the linear life cycle of tires into a circular one. Thanks to our supplier Enviro Systems, we were able to prove that with our recent processing run, explains Andreas Teir, who is in charge of Neste’s raw materials supply for chemical recycling.

In the past, Neste has already successfully concluded several processing runs with liquefied waste plastic. These runs built the basis for Neste’s decision to invest in large-scale capacities for chemical recycling at the company’s site in Porvoo, Finland.

The facilities being built are expected to be finished in 2025 and will be able to process 150,000 tonnes of liquefied waste plastic annually. They are part of project PULSE, which is funded by the European Union through the EU Innovation Fund.

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Biogases will play an important role in the European Union’s (EU) ambition to achieve a net-zero future by 2050.

Via the REPowerEU Plan, the European Commission has set a target to produce 35 billion cubic metres (bcm) of biomethane annually in the EU by 2030. This represents a ten-fold increase in current biomethane production.

From 35 bcm 2030 to 101 bcm by 2040

According to the latest European Biogas Association (EBA) consolidated data from 2022, Europe is producing 4 bcm of biomethane thanks to newly built plants and upgrading existing biogas units.

Raw biogas production mainly used in combined heat and power (CHP) plants is currently at 17 bcm.

The EU’s focus is now on 2040 as a mid-term milestone towards climate neutrality.

The European Commission has recommended a greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction target of 90 percent by 2040, relative to 1990 levels. This will require further action to decarbonize across all sectors of the economy.

The Commission’s accompanying Impact Assessment shows that even in a scenario with accelerated electrification across the economy, there will still be a substantial demand for gas.

This gas demand can be progressively replaced by renewable gases, such as biomethane.

The 2040 biomethane potential for Europe – the EU 27, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK – estimated in the Guidehouse report “Biogases towards 2040 and beyond  A realistic and resilient path to climate neutrality” is 111 bcm of which 74 bcm is from anaerobic digestion (AD) and 37 bcm via thermal gasification.

The biggest producers in 2040 are estimated to be Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Poland, as well as the UK.

The paper also provides a targeted update of the 2022 Gas for Climate study following the same assumptions and methodology, yet incorporating the latest data and insights to review the potential estimates for 2030 and 2050.

The latest analysis shows that up to 44 bcm of biomethane could be produced in Europe in 2030 and 165 bcm in 2050.

Additionally, to the biomethane potential assessment, the study gives further insights into novel feedstocks and technologies that can boost the potential for biomethane production.

Realizing those potentials will require a favorable and stable policy environment that gives certainty to stakeholders across the biomethane value chain.

However, with the right conditions, there is significant potential waiting to be unlocked the report shows.

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Overcoming these conversion challenges will help build algae biomass supply chains, accelerate their demand, and ultimately, drive the domestic bioeconomy by enabling greater volumes of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) conversion to algae.

To meet our nation’s sustainable fuel needs, we need to tap into the wide variety of biomass resources that are unique to different regions of the country. Learning how to better convert and utilize feedstocks like seaweed allows us to expand the bioeconomy and cut greenhouse gas emissions in the process, said Jeff Marootian, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).

A wide range of biomass resources, such as readily available seaweeds and wet waste feedstocks, will be critical to reach the Biden-Harris administration’s decarbonization goal of an equitable, clean energy future of net-zero emissions, economy-wide by no later than 2050.

The MACRO FOA will also support the government-wide targets of the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge, the Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy, and the “Clean Fuels & Products Shot“.

Experts across DOE are working together to develop economically viable conversion technologies using biomass feedstocks like algae that consume carbon dioxide that would otherwise be emitted to the atmosphere. Research and development through the funding announced today will advance the commercial adoption and integration of these technologies with carbon capture from industrial and power facilities to help fight climate change, while also creating new jobs and opportunities in communities across the country, said Brad Crabtree, Assistant Secretary of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.

Aligning with BETO and FECM’s strategic program goals, the MACRO FOA will fund selected projects in two focus areas:

• Topic Area 1 (funded by BETO) – Conversion of Seaweeds to Low Carbon Fuels and Bioproducts will focus on laboratory-scale R&D on the conversion of seaweeds and seaweed blends with other wet wastes to renewable fuels and bioproducts to enable these readily available feedstocks to access new markets.
• Topic Area 2 (funded by FECM) – Conversion of Algal Biomass for Low Carbon Agricultural Bioproducts will focus on near or completely integrated technologies that utilize CO₂ emissions streams from industrial sources or utilities to grow algae for source material and create value-added bioproducts. Of particular interest is the conversion and processing of bioproducts for use in agriculture and animal feed.

Both topic areas contribute to BETO’s strategic goals for SAFs and other low-carbon bioproducts, as well as FECM’s aims to use CO₂ emissions to grow algae and convert these feedstocks into low-carbon agricultural bioproducts.

BETO anticipates making approximately five to six financial assistance awards lasting from 24 to 36 months under this FOA.

FECM intends to award three to four financial assistance awards that will run up to 24 months in length.

The FOA concept paper deadline is May 10, 2024, and full applications are due by June 27, 2024.

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