The world’s largest producer of renewable fuel for planes, Neste, is sourcing key ingredients for its “green” fuel from an opaque supply chain that enables fresh palm oil to be passed off as waste, highlighting a global problem facing the aviation industry.
Many governments and airlines are pinning their hopes for more climate-friendly flying on sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Finnish biofuels giant Neste says it makes SAF with 100% “renewable waste and residue raw material”, such as animal fat and used cooking oil (UCO).
But Climate Home News and Swedish broadcaster SVT found that Neste’s biggest Malaysian supplier of UCO accepted fresh palm oil during a public drive intended to collect waste oil, without asking questions or carrying out checks.
Our investigation did not uncover direct evidence that this or other virgin palm oil has been used by Neste to produce SAF. But industry experts say that, once oil supplies are mixed at source, it is hard for refiners to keep it out of their supply chain.
Neste indicated it would look into our findings, adding that it is currently not aware of any verified cases of fraud that are directly connected to its raw material sourcing.
Planet-heating palm oil
Mounting evidence of widespread fraud risks in the SAF supply chain raises doubts about the climate benefits of the aviation sector’s main green strategy for the years ahead, analysts say.
Palm oil that has not been used for cooking or frying is not permitted under rules on which raw materials can be made into SAF supplied in Europe, Neste’s largest market, because of its links to deforestation.
The clearing of forests for palm oil plantations in Southeast Asia and beyond has long been associated with the loss of carbon-storing jungle, posing a threat to efforts to tackle planet-heating emissions and protect endangered wildlife.
Analysis of Malaysian custom records indicates that Neste sourced around 250,000 tonnes of UCO from Malaysia in 2024. That is more than double the total amount collected in the country annually, according to estimates published by Brussels-based NGO Transport and Environment (T&E). Discrepancies like these have fuelled suspicions about what UCO shipments from Malaysia contain.
A former director at Neste, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Climate Home News that, while the Finnish firm is a highly professional operator, no fuel producer can claim with 100% certainty that its supply chain does not include virgin palm oil or mislabelled raw materials due to the complexity of the sector and weak enforcement by regulators.
The findings add to questions about the integrity of green jet fuel after an investigation by Climate Home News and The Straits Times last year uncovered similar flaws in the supply chain. With more countries mandating the use of small but growing amounts of SAF, and fuel producers scrambling for limited raw materials, barely used and virgin palm oil is being passed off as UCO to traders, industry sources told us.
‘Very high’ fraud incidence
Demand for SAF has surged as governments and airlines promise to cut emissions from a sector with few low-carbon alternatives. Its backers say SAF can reduce planet-heating emissions by up to 80% over kerosene jet fuel when made with waste materials like used cooking oil that do not take up land for food crops or drive deforestation.
But the growing gap between what the world’s kitchens and food factories can realistically provide and what the aviation industry requires has created a clear incentive for fraud.
Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?
That holds true in Malaysia, a key sourcing country for SAF suppliers like Neste, where government-subsidised palm oil for cooking can be bought cheaply and then sold on for a higher price as UCO. For that reason, there are additional requirements that the oil should not be deliberately contaminated or manipulated for profit.
“The opportunity, or incidents, of fraud is very high,” Vasu R Vasuthewan, former Malaysia head for the ISCC, a global biofuels certification body, told The Straits Times last year.
No questions asked
On a Saturday in mid-January, dozens of people arrive at the central square in the historic city of Melaka carrying plastic bottles of all shapes and sizes filled with cooking oil.
A banner above a stall advertises a public collection drive organised by Evergreen Oil & Feed, Malaysia’s largest supplier of UCO to Neste and a provider to other multinational fuel companies, including Repsol and Shell.
The idea is simple: individuals bring used cooking oil from home and receive 3 Malaysian ringgit per litre, the equivalent of about $0.65.
Among those bringing greasy containers that morning is an undercover reporter sent by SVT to put the system to the test. She carries a transparent plastic jerry can. Inside it is not waste oil from a kitchen, but fresh palm oil she had poured into the container earlier that day.
The journalist steps forward and hands the jerry can to a volunteer. Without asking any questions about the oil’s origin or contents, the volunteer places it on a scale and notes the weight. He then unscrews the cap and pours the liquid into a large plastic drum, mixing it with oil brought in by other members of the public.
Afterwards, the reporter walks to a nearby table where another volunteer asks her to fill out a simple form before receiving payment for the oil. She writes down a fake name and phone number. No verification is requested, and the cash changes hands.
The blue plastic drum is sealed and loaded onto the back of a truck, which will transport the batch to Evergreen Oil & Feed’s processing facility on the outskirts of Melaka. There, the oil will enter the industrial supply chain that feeds the global market for “waste-based” biofuels, including SAF.
Checks intended to catch fraud
Evergreen Oil & Feed did not reply to a request for comment on what happened at its UCO collection in January. In May 2025, the company’s owner CK Lau told The Straits Times that the firm follows the “proper processes” in its collection based on requirements established by International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC), the leading certification scheme recognised by the European Commission.
Carl Nyberg, senior vice president for renewable products at Neste, said in an interview with SVT that ensuring the traceability and integrity of the raw materials used in the production of green fuels is of utmost importance for the Finnish firm.
“If we receive concerns or hints that there are anomalies or suspicions around the raw materials we receive, we go in and investigate and then we stop the supplies from such suppliers,” he added.
After watching the footage of the oil collection in Melaka, Nyberg said Neste would “take this on board and dig a bit deeper” to understand the background. “Our objective is, of course, to ensure that we have suppliers that are behaving correctly, delivering the feedstocks that they have promised to deliver us, as we have in the contract,” he added.
A Neste spokesperson later added in a statement that each raw material shipment may undergo additional checks, including “advanced laboratory testing” performed at the company’s own facilities. “Based on the results of analyses on the raw materials we have received, we have not received raw material cargoes with typical profiles of crude palm oil,” they added.
Neste exports outweigh collection
As Neste’s largest provider of UCO in Malaysia, Evergreen Oil & Feed supplied the Finnish giant with more than 50,000 tonnes of the raw material – enough to fill 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools – in the first half of 2025, according to customs data obtained by SVT.
In total, Neste sourced around 250,000 tonnes of UCO from all the Malaysian traders it dealt with in 2024, the data showed.
However, only 100,000 tonnes of UCO are estimated to be collected annually in Malaysia, according to a 2024 analysis by consultancy Stratas Advisors for T&E. “Our suspicion is that not all of these volumes are legit waste oils, suggesting that some of them could be [virgin] palm oil,” said Simon Suzan, a data analyst at T&E.
Under the current system, the entire SAF supply chain largely relies on a long paper trail rooted in self-declarations submitted by restaurants, factories and households providing the UCO, alongside sporadic inspections at the points where the raw material is collected.
In Europe, the verification of green fuel supply chains largely rests on certification systems like ISCC, which is led by the biofuels industry and, according to one source, enjoys “a kind of monopoly” in the sector. The body issues sustainability certificates to commodities traders and fuel suppliers.
ISCC says its certification process supports “sustainable, fully traceable, deforestation-free and climate-friendly supply chains”. But the certifier has come under frequent criticism from campaigners and researchers, who argue that its auditing system relies heavily on company-provided data and can struggle to detect fraud in complex global supply chains.
Watch the full Swedish documentary, “When can I fly green?”, on SVT Play
The problems in Malaysia are not isolated. A separate investigation by AFP and SourceMaterial recently found that Indonesian companies targeted in a palm oil fraud probe had supplied European firms including Neste and Eni.
In February, Indonesian police detained 11 people over suspicions that local companies had conspired with government officials to pass off palm oil as a waste byproduct called palm oil mill effluent (POME), including by offering bribes.
Neste said it had instructed its supplier to exclude the implicated Indonesian companies from its supply chain after the investigation became public. Analysis of periodic samples from shipments between 2023 and 2025 were “consistent with palm-derived waste”, not palm oil, it added. There is no suggestion that Neste had any knowledge of, or involvement in, the alleged Indonesian fraud.
EU ‘not happy’ about fraud risks
Neste turns the raw materials it buys from Southeast Asia and other regions into renewable fuels at its refineries in Singapore, the Netherlands and Finland.
Last year, the company sold nearly three-quarters of its renewable fuels, including SAF, in Europe, where green fuels are central to efforts to reduce the climate impact of aviation. The European Union, alongside the UK, introduced the world’s first SAF mandates in January 2025, requiring fuel suppliers to blend at least 2% SAF with conventional kerosene.
Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, EU spokesperson for climate and energy, said the European Commission is “of course not happy” about the risk of virgin palm oil contaminating the SAF supply chain.
“This was not the purpose when we started the policy and when we wanted to create this global wake-up call of greening aviation,” she added in an interview with SVT. “It undermines the policy because it is basically [de]frauding those who are complying with the rules.”
-
Will the EU finally make waste pay for its growing carbon footprint?
A decision by Brussels to bring refuse incineration into the EU Emissions Trading System would restore a basic principle: the polluter pays -
Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn
Transport officials in Brussels and the UK seek to reassure the sustainable aviation fuel industry that blending mandates at airports are here to stay
Itkonen said the European Commission is doing the best it can within its remit, but enforcement is up to individual member states. “We also have the possibility to make these rules more stringent and look into them and revise them,” she added.
Even if regulation is tightened, ensuring fraud-free SAF supplies will not be an easy task, industry insiders warn.
The former Neste director told Climate Home News that, with poor enforcement of the rules especially in source countries, complete control of the supply chain is practically impossible for companies handling enormous volumes of raw materials, like the Finnish firm.
“I don’t think anyone can say 100% putting their hand on a Bible,” the ex-employee added when asked whether Neste could confidently claim no virgin palm oil enters its SAF supply chain.
“The market needs a level playing field. If Neste rejects questionable supply, competitors will accept it. It’s a market-wide problem of fraudulent feedstocks.”
The post Top green jet fuel producer linked to suspect waste-oil supply chain appeared first on Climate Home News.
Top green jet fuel producer linked to suspect waste-oil supply chain
Big cuts in generating capacity are coming as the Colorado River struggles to meet demand.
Some day in the next 12 months—maybe in late August, maybe not until next spring— Lake Mead will drop below the critical threshold of 1,035 feet above sea level.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 12 June 2026: El Niño begins | COP31 hosts eye electrification | Atlantic current monitoring at risk
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
El Niño begins
‘DOMINO WEATHER’: The natural weather phenomenon El Niño, which can raise global heat and “bring domino weather effects across the planet”, is now underway, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared on Thursday, reported the Washington Post. The Japanese Meteorological Administration also identified the start of El Niño on Wednesday, said Bloomberg. According to the Japanese weather agency, the event is “expected to intensify in the coming months and become very strong later in the year, persisting into at least December”, reported the outlet.
‘SUPER EVENT’: BBC News reported that “many forecasts suggest this could end up as a so-called ‘super’ El Niño” and be “among the strongest ever recorded”. It added: “Coming on top of decades of human-caused warming, it could bring another record-hot year – most likely in 2027 – with disruption to weather, food supplies and economies running well into that year.”
COP31 hosts eye electrification
‘35 BY 35’: COP31 hosts Turkey and Australia have called for countries to support a target of electrifying 35% of global energy use by 2035, reported Politico. Speaking at climate talks in Bonn, Germany, Turkish minister Murat Kurum said that electrification would be a “flagship priority” at the COP31 summit, noted the publication. Kurum added that “electrifying daily life, from transport to buildings and industry” could “protect families and businesses from volatile energy markets”, said the outlet.
WASTE AND BUILDINGS: Climate Home News reported that electrification was one of three priorities unveiled by the COP31 hosts, with the other two being waste and buildings. On buildings, the COP31 hosts “quietly overhauled [their] goal”, Climate Home News said. It reported: “An initial press statement on Monday set out a target ‘to achieve at least a 25% increase in energy efficiency in buildings by 2035’. But…on Tuesday, that was replaced with a different goal to ‘reduce energy consumption intensity in the building sector by at least 25% by 2035’.”
‘HARDEST’ CHALLENGE: Elsewhere in Bonn, UN climate chief Simon Stiell said “governments must stop revisiting climate commitments and start delivering on them”, South Africa’s Mail and Guardian reported. It quoted Stiell as saying: “Tackling the global climate crisis is the hardest but most important thing humanity has ever tried to do together…We are not yet where we need to be. But we are somewhere we have never been before.”
Around the world
- ETS EXTRA: The EU has agreed “stronger” price controls on “ETS2”, its planned trading system for heating and transport emissions, according to Reuters.
- OCEAN STRESS: The rate of sea level rise has doubled in 10 years amid “severe and accelerating” pressures on oceans, said a UN report covered by Time.
- CLIMATE MIGRANTS: Donald Trump’s “immigration crackdown is largely targeting people from the countries most vulnerable to displacement from climate-driven disasters”, according to Guardian analysis.
- ULTRA-RICH: Investments by the world’s ultra-rich in 2022 are linked to nearly $1tn in climate damages, according to a Greenpeace Africa analysis covered by BusinessGreen.
Two
The number of bidders for Trump’s auction for drilling rights in an Arctic wildlife refuge, with big oil companies “sitting out the sale”, reported Bloomberg.
Latest climate research
- As the Arctic warms, increased iceberg activity could “reshape” deep-sea habitats and “elevate” navigational hazards as maritime traffic expands | Nature
- Around 11% of the population of the world’s “rarest great ape”, the Tapanuli orangutan, is estimated to have perished in an extreme rainfall event in Indonesia in 2025 | Current Biology
- Canada’s forests are shifting from a carbon sink to a carbon source, due to “wildfires disturbances” | Global Change Biology
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Solar power has overtaken gas in Asia to become the region’s third largest electricity source behind coal and hydropower, according to Carbon Brief analysis of data from the thinktank Ember. Solar became the third largest electricity source for Asia on an annual basis in April 2026, according to the analysis. In the year to April 2026, solar generated 1,727 terawatt hours (TWh), while gas generated 1,711TWh, it added.
Spotlight
Atlantic current monitoring at risk
This week, Carbon Brief reports on how Trump plans could disrupt efforts to track a major ocean current.
The Irminger Sea, a patch of frigid ocean east of Greenland, plays an outsized role in the Earth’s climate.
Here, surface water that has travelled thousands of kilometres from the tropics grows cold and dense enough to sink to the ocean’s depths – a transformation that must occur for the water to begin a long journey back to the southern hemisphere.
This makes the Irminger Sea an “action centre” for the mighty Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the vast system of ocean currents that keeps temperatures in Europe mild.
Last week, the US government announced plans to dismantle ocean moorings installed in the Irminger Sea which, among other things, collect data on the health of the AMOC.
This came as part of a programme to “descope” the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a $368m network of ocean sensors installed in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
Two of the moorings earmarked for removal in the Irminger Sea form part of an internationally funded, trans-Atlantic AMOC monitoring array, known as OSNAP, that stretches from Canada to Scotland.
Experts told Carbon Brief the move by the Trump administration highlights the vulnerability of AMOC observation systems around the world. These deep-sea moorings – scattered across the Atlantic – collect real-time data on, among other things, ocean current, temperature, pressure and biochemistry.
Prof Penny Holliday, chief scientific officer of the UK National Oceanography Centre, told Carbon Brief that the OSNAP array, as well as the RAPID array at 26N, are “entirely dependent” on research grants that have to be “continually reapplied for”.
“Funding is perilous all the time,” she said.
A report prepared last month by scientists for Nordic ministers exploring the security of funding for AMOC observing systems warned that RAPID and OSNAP were in “critical condition” and faced “material exposure over an 18-month horizon”. Meanwhile, other key basin-wide and global components of the global AMOC observing system were rated as “at risk”.
It is not just US funding that is uncertain. The report notes, for example, that the five-yearly funding the UK provides to RAPID and OSNAP is “at risk from 2027 due to year-on-year budget reductions” at the Natural Environmental Research Council.
(RAPID is funded by the US and UK, whereas OSNAP is backed by five different countries, with the US contributing half of the total financial support.)
Report co-author Dr Femke de Jong from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research told Carbon Brief that “continued AMOC observations” are under pressure in “multiple countries”. She said:
“While the risk of a declining AMOC to society is starting to be recognised, there is not yet a system or institution in place to guarantee a way to monitor it.”
AMOC monitoring arrays are still in their infancy – RAPID, the oldest, was launched in 2004. Two decades of data captured so far shows that the AMOC is slowing down. However, scientists will need many more years of data to be able to confidently link the decline to climate change, rather than natural variability in the ocean.
NOC’s Holliday points to the disconnect between scientific and funder timelines:
“The timescale of observations needed in order to be able to detect a climate change signal from the very naturally variable ocean is around 40-60 years…. [And yet], in the Netherlands, they have to apply for a new grant for their ocean moorings every two years. They are going to have to do that for 40 years.
“This is a very inefficient way of getting funding for what should be critical infrastructure.”
This spotlight first appeared in Cited, Carbon Brief’s new fortnightly newsletter focused on climate research. Sign up for free.
Watch, read, listen
‘BEYOND GROWTH’: A group of economists set out a “roadmap for eradicating poverty beyond growth” in the Guardian.
OIL CAMPAIGN: Politico reported on how “oil industry allies” are campaigning against attribution science, including by working to discredit a US National Academies report that “will examine research into the ways corporate climate pollution is intensifying natural disasters”.
‘FIGHT BACK’: For the Apocalyptic Optimist podcast, Dr Dana Fisher spoke to historian and author Dr Naomi Oreskes about how to “fight back” against climate misinformation.
Coming up
- 8-18 June: Bonn climate talks, Bonn, Germany
- 16-18 June: 11th Our ocean conference, Mombasa, Kenya
- 18 June: International Energy Agency Global Hydrogen Review 2026 report launch
Pick of the jobs
- S-Curve Economics, head of road transport | Salary: £75,000-£80,000. Location: Remote (UK)
- UK Department for Energy Security and Net-Zero, speechwriter to the secretary of state | Salary: £62,595-£69,765. Location: London (hybrid)
- Basque Centre for Climate Change, postdoctoral researcher for JustBioSolar project | Salary: €27,040-€34,320. Location: Bilbao, Spain
- Boston Globe climate science and environment reporter | Salary: Unknown. Location: Boston, US
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 12 June 2026: El Niño begins | COP31 hosts eye electrification | Atlantic current monitoring at risk appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Solar has overtaken gas power in Asia to become the continent’s third-largest source of electricity, according to new analysis by Carbon Brief.
The rapid expansion of solar power in nations such as China, India and Pakistan has seen its annual output increase nearly fourfold since 2020.
Asia accounts for around 60% of the world’s solar-power growth in this period, putting the continent at the heart of the global solar boom.
Coal and hydropower remain Asia’s largest sources of electricity, generating roughly 52% and 12% of the continent’s power each year, respectively.
Yet despite expectations that gas power would undergo “explosive growth” in the region, output has stalled due to supply disruptions, relatively high gas prices and growth in clean alternatives.
In contrast, solar has surged, generating some 1,727 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in the 12 months to April 2026.
As the chart below shows, this pushes it just ahead of gas, which generated 1,711TWh over the same period and has remained roughly flat for the past several years.
The milestone reflects wider trends in the global electricity mix, with monthly generation from both wind and solar surpassing gas generation globally for the first time in April 2026.
Asia’s solar expansion has been driven largely by China, which accounts for nearly three-quarters of the growth in the region’s output since 2020.
Record installations in 2025 took China’s cumulative installed capacity to 1.2 terawatts (TW) by the end of the year.
China also dominates global solar supply chains, hosting more than 80% of solar manufacturing capacity.
This means it has played an important role in enabling solar deployment in other Asian countries through cheap solar-panel exports. Amid the energy crisis sparked by the Iran war, Chinese solar exports to Asia doubled to reach a record 39 gigawatts (GW) in March 2026.
Meanwhile, Asian countries have faced a number of challenges in expanding gas-power capacity. Most of these nations are reliant on imported liquified natural gas (LNG) to support their gas-power projects.
Around 81GW of planned gas capacity in Asia was cancelled in 2022 and 2023, amid LNG supply disruptions and price spikes following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
LNG import terminals and pipelines have faced delays and cancellations in south Asia and South Korea as a result of rising fuel and construction costs, as well as weak demand for gas power.
Global gas turbine shortages have also delayed plans to build new gas-power plants in Vietnam and the Philippines.
While Asia’s gas-power capacity increased by 22% between 2019 and 2024, gas-fired generation has only increased by a modest 6% over the same period. Existing gas plants are not always operating at high capacities, as gas is outcompeted by other fuels.
These trends are not uniform across the region, with increased generation in some countries – such as China and Taiwan – being offset by declines in others – such as Japan and India.
Although China has nearly doubled its gas -power generation in the past decade, gas supply issues and high prices make it less competitive than coal and renewables.
The expansion of clean energy has also reduced the need for gas-fired generation in many Asian countries. Pakistan’s widely reported “boom” in rooftop solar is one notable example of this trend.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the latest energy crisis has “renewed gas supply reliability and affordability concerns” among gas-importing countries in Asia, many of which are highly dependent on gas flows through the strait of Hormuz.
Methodology
The figures in this article are based on Ember’s monthly and annual electricity data for Asia.
Annual data was used for the year-end data points, as the coverage is more complete compared to the monthly data.
Rolling annual totals based on monthly data were used to interpolate between the annual data points.
The figures in the chart are based on Ember’s definition of Asia, which covers the following countries: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Georgia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Macao, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
This does not include some countries that are part of the continent of Asia and that use relatively large amounts of gas, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Russia.
The post Analysis: Solar overtakes gas power in Asia for first time ever appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Solar overtakes gas power in Asia for first time ever
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