The environmental pressure group said it had tested fossil diesel sold at 46 petrol stations across Germany to determine which vegetable oils were used in compulsory biodiesel blending content.
HAMBURG (Reuters) - Germany's policy of blending fossil diesel with biodiesel to combat climate change is failing because 20 percent comes from soy oil produced in countries where deforestation takes place, Greenpeace said on Wednesday.
The environmental pressure group said it had tested fossil diesel sold at 46 petrol stations across Germany to determine which vegetable oils were used in compulsory biodiesel blending content.
About 20 percent was soy oil rather than rapeseed oil from the German harvest, it said.
Greenpeace said in a statement that Germany's blending program would not reduce global warming as soy oil imports largely came from South America, where tropical rain forests were being cut down to cultivate soybeans.
!ADVERTISEMENT!"Huge areas of tropical rain forests are being destroyed for the new plantations, for example in Argentina," Greenpeace said.
Germany's biofuels industry association VDB said Greenpeace's charges were groundless.
"Soy oil comes from North America, Argentina and Brazil," said VDB chief executive Petra Sprick.
"Soy oil from the U.S. and Argentina does not have rain forest issues. Imports from Brazil are largely handled by the major trading houses such as ADM, Bunge and Cargill which have voluntary agreements only to purchase soy oil from sustainable agriculture and not from areas using cleared tropical rain forests."
Germany introduced compulsory blending of biodiesel with fossil diesel at oil refineries in January 2007 as part of its program to combat global warming. Fossil diesel must contain 4.4 percent biodiesel by energy content.
A vegetable oil trader said the Greenpeace figures displayed the growing volume of biodiesel imports into Germany.
"A large volume of soy oil-based biodiesel seems to be coming in from Argentina, which only started large scale biodiesel output last year and is apparently concentrating hard on exports," the trader said.
(Reporting by Michael Hogan; Editing by Elizabeth Piper)
