Will the US EPA boost of biofuels include
palm oil?
The US-Israel war against Iran has highlighted an interesting point on sustainable economies.
Food and fuel can be grown to reduce the need for fossil fuels.
Food and fuel can be grown to reduce the need for fossil fuels.
US soybeans
According to Clean Fuels Alliance America when it comes to US soybeans:
Clean Fuels Support Fuel Security and Food Security
U.S. soybean oil is a preferred feedstock for biomass-based diesel fuels, including biodiesel, renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Boosting domestic production of clean fuels supports energy independence, a key priority for our nation. It also supports farm profitability and stability, enabling farmers to meet growing demand for food and fuel.
U.S. soy is a top agricultural export ($31+ billion) and a critical, dual-purpose commodity for food and fuel. While ~50-60% of soybeans are exported (mainly to China, Mexico, EU) for feed and oil, domestic demand for fuel is soaring, with over 50% of soybean oil projected for biofuels (biodiesel, SAF) by 2025/26
The $31+ billion value for U.S. soy exports challenges "expert" opinions from sources like Dan Lashof, a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, Jeremy Martin, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Aaron Smith at the University of California, Berkeley who were all quoted in a report by Georgina Gustin for Inside Climate News.
The Trump Administration’s New Biofuels Targets Threaten Carbon-Rich Rainforests, reported Georgina Gustin.
"The U.S. doesn’t produce enough vegetable oil to satisfy the demands of the new blending targets. That means it will have to import more foreign vegetable oil, which will imperil climate-critical tropical forests thousands of miles away as they’re cleared to grow more oil crops."
This is utter nonsense considering the massive exports of US soybeans. Inside Climate News should do better than this.
Quoting critics of biofuels like Tim Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton University who has long questioned the emissions benefits of biofuels, hurts the credibility of the report:
“Every gallon of increased U.S. biodiesel results in almost exactly a gallon increase in imports of vegetable oil,” he explained. “The sources of new vegetable oil in the world are primarily oil palm expansion into tropical forests in Southeast Asia and increasing[ly] Africa and Latin America, and soybean expansion in Latin America.”
Tim Searchinger is clearly not an expert on what's goin' on with the US Renewable Fuel Standard or tropical forests.
The challenge for Tim Searchinger is to support his claim that every gallon of increased US biodiesel could have come from oil palm oil expansion into tropical forests.
Yes, we have all seen the news that Indonesia plans to expand cultivated areas for palm oil but this move is aimed at increasing production of palm oil to meet higher domestic demands for food and energy independence.
As Hilman Palaon writes in the Lowy Institute:
Six decades of history explain why Jakarta keeps fuel cheap – and why any reform must work with that logic.
This is why US-Israel war against Iran which choked energy supplies globally has prompted Indonesia to revisit a B50 biofuel using palm oil as a feedstock. As the world's biggest producer of palm oil, Indonesia has the luxury of calling up a greener source of energy compared to its neighbors who are falling back on coal and that should be a good thing in fighting climate change.
Indonesia as the world's second-largest coal producer which relies on coal for approximately 68% of its electricity generation is facing significant challenges in meeting renewable energy goals. While pledging net-zero by 2060, the country is facing a rise in captive coal power for industrial nickel smelters, undermining decarbonization efforts
If the video of an orangutan fighting a bulldozer clearing land for palm oil made you boycott palm oil, here's a video of an orangutan wandering lost in a coal field in Indonesia. The options for Indonesia cannot be easy where export revenues matter as much as pledges towards net-zero and affordable energy for its citizens.
As for the US effort to increase the use of biofuels, Rebekah Alvey, a staff reporter for Civil Eats, was on point in covering the news.
Trump Administration Boosts Biofuels in Effort to Ease Farmer Woes
The EPA finalized a rule that is expected to increase biofuel production and use, which could open needed markets for U.S. corn and soybean farmers.
U.S. corn and soybean farmers. Not much hope for "tropical forest destroying" palm oil.
But getting back to the chicken-little act of Dan Lashof, Jeremy Martin, Aaron Smith and Tim Searchinger that increased biofuels consumption by the US will threaten tropical forests in palm oil producing countries, they should read the Wageningen University report that says:
"In Indonesia alone – the world’s biggest palm oil producer – more than 10 million hectares of new oil palm plantations have been created since 2000. Many of them replaced other crops such as rubber and rice: oil palms are more productive per hectare with lower labour costs, but about one third of the new plantations are on recently deforested land and vulnerable peatlands."
Props to Georgina Gustin for including the opinion of Paul Winters, of Clean Fuels Alliance America, who dismissed data behind indirect land use change.
“Environmentalists who promote the theory of indirect land use change [ILUC] have been thoroughly unsuccessful in preventing deforestation over the past several decades,” Winters wrote in an email. “National and state-level policies to preserve existing forests are the only mechanism that will work. The level of uncertainty and unreliability in ILUC models is astounding and outcomes are entirely dependent on assumptions.”
That explains why the EU lost its case at the WTO against Indonesian palm oil biofuels.
The dispute stems from the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive II, which classifies palm oil as a “high-risk” feedstock for indirect land-use change (ILUC), effectively phasing it out of the EU’s renewable energy targets for transportation.
The same restrictions on palm oil usage in renewable energy for the US remains as Indonesia has yet to challenge the US EPA’s findings on the same ILUC issue.
Based on what's happening in real time, it would appear that Dan Lashof, Jeremy Martin, Aaron Smith and Tim Searchinger are raising false alarms on Trump's new biofuel targets.
The thing is, higher blends of biofuels to support the US renewable fuels strategy are highly unlikely to include virgin palm oil grown on forest lands as they claim.
Under the US Renewable Fuel Standard, oil refiners must blend billions of gallons of corn-based ethanol and other biofuels into the country’s fuel supply each year, or buy tradable compliance credits — known as RINs — from companies that do the blending. Biofuels News
It is however possible that virgin soybean oil may be showing up in US biofuels as Used Cooking Oil (UCO) as the EPA investigates fraud in UCOs from China.
Fraudulent UCOs from China is a complicated issue as covered by Miranda Jeyaretnam for Time Magazine.
"The U.S. went from being a net exporter of UCO to becoming a net importer in 2022, and China has accounted for a significant amount of those imports. In 2023, China became the top supplier of UCO to the U.S."
Here's the kicker though. China's UCO's could contain much more soy than anything else.
"Indications of renewed Chinese purchasing of US soybeans created a spike in commodity futures markets at the end of last week. The industry is working to place more sales to China in the context of US president Donald Trump's 4 February announcement that China would buy 8mn t of US soybeans beyond the previously agreed 12mn t."
It is possible that China’s UCO exports to the US causes deforestation in Brazil which is the dominant supplier of soybeans to China, with imports expected to reach a record 85 million tons in the 2025/26 season (Sept-Aug).
Cheap canola from Canada and Australia which fight for market share in China further affect the origin of oil from China’s UCO exports to the US.
Bottomline here for folks like Tim Searchinger and anyone else concerned about Trump’s higher biofuels blend and tropical forests is quite simply, give up the export revenues from the US soy industry and consume what you produce.
Indonesia is leading the pack with its drive for food and fuel sufficiency with palm oil. The US is well equipped to copy the Indonesian model with US soy.
Published April 2026 CSPO Watch
Clean Fuels Support Fuel Security and Food Security
U.S. soybean oil is a preferred feedstock for biomass-based diesel fuels, including biodiesel, renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Boosting domestic production of clean fuels supports energy independence, a key priority for our nation. It also supports farm profitability and stability, enabling farmers to meet growing demand for food and fuel.
U.S. soy is a top agricultural export ($31+ billion) and a critical, dual-purpose commodity for food and fuel. While ~50-60% of soybeans are exported (mainly to China, Mexico, EU) for feed and oil, domestic demand for fuel is soaring, with over 50% of soybean oil projected for biofuels (biodiesel, SAF) by 2025/26
The $31+ billion value for U.S. soy exports challenges "expert" opinions from sources like Dan Lashof, a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, Jeremy Martin, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Aaron Smith at the University of California, Berkeley who were all quoted in a report by Georgina Gustin for Inside Climate News.
The Trump Administration’s New Biofuels Targets Threaten Carbon-Rich Rainforests, reported Georgina Gustin.
"The U.S. doesn’t produce enough vegetable oil to satisfy the demands of the new blending targets. That means it will have to import more foreign vegetable oil, which will imperil climate-critical tropical forests thousands of miles away as they’re cleared to grow more oil crops."
This is utter nonsense considering the massive exports of US soybeans. Inside Climate News should do better than this.
Quoting critics of biofuels like Tim Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton University who has long questioned the emissions benefits of biofuels, hurts the credibility of the report:
“Every gallon of increased U.S. biodiesel results in almost exactly a gallon increase in imports of vegetable oil,” he explained. “The sources of new vegetable oil in the world are primarily oil palm expansion into tropical forests in Southeast Asia and increasing[ly] Africa and Latin America, and soybean expansion in Latin America.”
Tim Searchinger is clearly not an expert on what's goin' on with the US Renewable Fuel Standard or tropical forests.
The challenge for Tim Searchinger is to support his claim that every gallon of increased US biodiesel could have come from oil palm oil expansion into tropical forests.
Yes, we have all seen the news that Indonesia plans to expand cultivated areas for palm oil but this move is aimed at increasing production of palm oil to meet higher domestic demands for food and energy independence.
As Hilman Palaon writes in the Lowy Institute:
Six decades of history explain why Jakarta keeps fuel cheap – and why any reform must work with that logic.
This is why US-Israel war against Iran which choked energy supplies globally has prompted Indonesia to revisit a B50 biofuel using palm oil as a feedstock. As the world's biggest producer of palm oil, Indonesia has the luxury of calling up a greener source of energy compared to its neighbors who are falling back on coal and that should be a good thing in fighting climate change.
Indonesia as the world's second-largest coal producer which relies on coal for approximately 68% of its electricity generation is facing significant challenges in meeting renewable energy goals. While pledging net-zero by 2060, the country is facing a rise in captive coal power for industrial nickel smelters, undermining decarbonization efforts
If the video of an orangutan fighting a bulldozer clearing land for palm oil made you boycott palm oil, here's a video of an orangutan wandering lost in a coal field in Indonesia. The options for Indonesia cannot be easy where export revenues matter as much as pledges towards net-zero and affordable energy for its citizens.
As for the US effort to increase the use of biofuels, Rebekah Alvey, a staff reporter for Civil Eats, was on point in covering the news.
Trump Administration Boosts Biofuels in Effort to Ease Farmer Woes
The EPA finalized a rule that is expected to increase biofuel production and use, which could open needed markets for U.S. corn and soybean farmers.
U.S. corn and soybean farmers. Not much hope for "tropical forest destroying" palm oil.
But getting back to the chicken-little act of Dan Lashof, Jeremy Martin, Aaron Smith and Tim Searchinger that increased biofuels consumption by the US will threaten tropical forests in palm oil producing countries, they should read the Wageningen University report that says:
"In Indonesia alone – the world’s biggest palm oil producer – more than 10 million hectares of new oil palm plantations have been created since 2000. Many of them replaced other crops such as rubber and rice: oil palms are more productive per hectare with lower labour costs, but about one third of the new plantations are on recently deforested land and vulnerable peatlands."
Props to Georgina Gustin for including the opinion of Paul Winters, of Clean Fuels Alliance America, who dismissed data behind indirect land use change.
“Environmentalists who promote the theory of indirect land use change [ILUC] have been thoroughly unsuccessful in preventing deforestation over the past several decades,” Winters wrote in an email. “National and state-level policies to preserve existing forests are the only mechanism that will work. The level of uncertainty and unreliability in ILUC models is astounding and outcomes are entirely dependent on assumptions.”
That explains why the EU lost its case at the WTO against Indonesian palm oil biofuels.
The dispute stems from the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive II, which classifies palm oil as a “high-risk” feedstock for indirect land-use change (ILUC), effectively phasing it out of the EU’s renewable energy targets for transportation.
The same restrictions on palm oil usage in renewable energy for the US remains as Indonesia has yet to challenge the US EPA’s findings on the same ILUC issue.
Based on what's happening in real time, it would appear that Dan Lashof, Jeremy Martin, Aaron Smith and Tim Searchinger are raising false alarms on Trump's new biofuel targets.
The thing is, higher blends of biofuels to support the US renewable fuels strategy are highly unlikely to include virgin palm oil grown on forest lands as they claim.
Under the US Renewable Fuel Standard, oil refiners must blend billions of gallons of corn-based ethanol and other biofuels into the country’s fuel supply each year, or buy tradable compliance credits — known as RINs — from companies that do the blending. Biofuels News
It is however possible that virgin soybean oil may be showing up in US biofuels as Used Cooking Oil (UCO) as the EPA investigates fraud in UCOs from China.
Fraudulent UCOs from China is a complicated issue as covered by Miranda Jeyaretnam for Time Magazine.
"The U.S. went from being a net exporter of UCO to becoming a net importer in 2022, and China has accounted for a significant amount of those imports. In 2023, China became the top supplier of UCO to the U.S."
Here's the kicker though. China's UCO's could contain much more soy than anything else.
"Indications of renewed Chinese purchasing of US soybeans created a spike in commodity futures markets at the end of last week. The industry is working to place more sales to China in the context of US president Donald Trump's 4 February announcement that China would buy 8mn t of US soybeans beyond the previously agreed 12mn t."
It is possible that China’s UCO exports to the US causes deforestation in Brazil which is the dominant supplier of soybeans to China, with imports expected to reach a record 85 million tons in the 2025/26 season (Sept-Aug).
Cheap canola from Canada and Australia which fight for market share in China further affect the origin of oil from China’s UCO exports to the US.
Bottomline here for folks like Tim Searchinger and anyone else concerned about Trump’s higher biofuels blend and tropical forests is quite simply, give up the export revenues from the US soy industry and consume what you produce.
Indonesia is leading the pack with its drive for food and fuel sufficiency with palm oil. The US is well equipped to copy the Indonesian model with US soy.
Published April 2026 CSPO Watch