Germany’s biodiesel refineries face a shortage of rapeseed oil because of new European Union rules requiring biofuels to be sustainable. The measure, designed to prevent the destruction of tropical rainforests to produce biofuel feedstock such as palm oil and soy oil, requires exporters to have a sustainable farming certificate. Germany’s major rapeseed suppliers, France, Britain and Poland, don’t have the certificates.
Germany’s biodiesel industry is one of Europe’s largest and consumes about 75 per cent of the country’s rapeseed crop.
