Global biofuel supply chains reveal systemic fraud: Neste’s palm oil-to-jet fuel pipeline exposes greenwashing in waste-to-energy transitions
Original framing: “Top green jet fuel producer linked to suspect waste-oil supply chain” — Climate Home News
The fraudulent waste oil supply chain mirrors historical patterns of resource extraction in Southeast Asia, where colonial-era palm oil plantations displaced local food systems, and modern 'green' mandates repeat these dynamics. The 2015 Southeast Asian haze crisis, driven by palm oil-driven deforestation, was a direct result of similar supply chain opacity and corporate accountability gaps. In the 1990s, the EU’s biofuel subsidies for rapeseed oil led to indirect land-use change in Eastern Europe, foreshadowing today’s palm oil-to-jet fuel pipeline. The current scandal echoes the 2008 food price crisis, where biofuel mandates in the Global North diverted food crops, triggering famine in the Global South.
The Neste scandal is not an isolated corporate failure but a systemic outcome of the EU’s biofuel mandates, which incentivize fraud by treating palm oil as a 'waste' feedstock despite its role in deforestation.
This mirrors historical patterns of extractive economies in Southeast Asia, where colonial-era plantations laid the groundwork for today’s 'green' land grabs, displacing indigenous communities and erasing traditional agroforestry systems. The fraud reveals how Western 'circular economy' models often extract value from Global South ecosystems while externalizing costs to local knowledge systems and marginalized labor. Indigenous land defenders and waste picker cooperatives offer viable alternatives, but their exclusion from certification schemes underscores the need for systemic reform. The EU’s policy framework must shift from corporate accountability to structural change, prioritizing deforestation-free feedstocks and community-led circular economies to break the cycle of fraud and displacement.