ISCC to beef up POME audits in 2022

The International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) body is tightening auditing rules around palm-based waste biodiesel feedstocks to combat fraudulent behaviour.

Following a one-year transition, palm oil mills generating and supplying wastes and residues such as palm oil mill effluent (POME), empty fruit bunch (EFB) oil and pressed palm fibres under ISCC must be audited on-site annually from 1 November 2022.

Under the current process, non-certified points of origin for waste products can issue a self-declaration to a collecting point, which when audited will only face scrutiny on a sample size of mills comprising at least the square root of those that are self-declared and generate more than 10 t/month of POME or EFB oil.

But stakeholders said this system does not take into account the increasing demand and risk for these products under the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED), which double counts biofuels made from these feedstocks towards mandates due to their higher greenhouse gas savings.

If POME prices exceed crude palm oil values then mills will be incentivised to increase output of the waste product, or for bad actors to blend lower-cost, off-specification palm products.

European waste-feedstock participants have long called for greater policing of the market and in response the ISCC already imposed stricter definitions of what constitutes POME last October.

But this was considered inadequate to suppress fraudulent practices, a fact highlighted by a South Korean biodiesel producer forced to partially close its plant earlier this year after receiving a bad batch of POME feedstock.

Many have called for the ISCC to align more with the Italian National System that requires all palm mills to be individually certified and ensure there are consequences the non-compliant such as withdrawing the credential that is required for their product to be allowable under RED.

From November next year every palm oil mill will have to be individually certified as a point of origin following an annual audit, or if not and is supplying waste and residues it will need to be audited on-site during the yearly inspection of the collection point.

Some pushed back, saying the new measures will vastly increase operating costs and be a mammoth task for auditors, especially if the collection point is sourcing from tens of points of origin each from different regions or countries.

But in the absence of a viable alternative to mitigate the risk of fraudulent behavior the ISCC has decided to go ahead with the new measures, though remote inspections may be allowed in exceptional circumstances due to Covid-19 travel restrictions. It added that it will invite further feedback to strengthen the certification process and loosen the bureaucratic straitjacket.

By Amandeep Parmar