UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt failed to mention the term “climate change” at all when setting out the government’s spring budget – the first since it was confirmed that 2023 was Earth’s hottest year on record.
As expected, Hunt used his budget speech to announce that the government is freezing fuel duty on petrol and diesel for the 14th year in a row.
As of 2023, this policy had added up to 7% to UK emissions, according to previous Carbon Brief analysis.
The chancellor also announced a year-long extension to the windfall tax on oil-and-gas companies, but failed to commit to spending the money raised on new climate investments.
Hunt did not offer any new policies to help boost the rollout of key low-carbon technologies, such as electric vehicles (EVs) and heat pumps.
He also pledged no further changes to the government’s long-term regime of maximising oil and gas production.
Overall, despite some confirmation of further funding for supply chains, analysts described the budget as a “missed opportunity” for boosting low-carbon industries and accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels in the UK.
Alongside the budget, the government also confirmed key details of its sixth auction round for new renewable energy projects, including a pot worth just over £1bn.
With a UK general election on the horizon – and Labour enjoying a substantial lead in the polls – this budget is likely to be Hunt’s last as chancellor.
Below, Carbon Brief runs through the key announcements.
Fuel duty
The government has frozen fuel duty on petrol and diesel for the 14th year in a row.
This persistent policy amounts to a significant tax cut, as fuel duty has dropped considerably in real terms over the years rather than rising with inflation.
The freeze makes it cheaper to drive a car and reduces the incentive to use more fuel-efficient models. As of 2023, Carbon Brief calculated that fuel duty freezes had increased UK carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by up to 7%.
Hunt has also opted to retain an extra 5p cut in duty, which was first introduced in 2022 to address rising fuel costs. This reduced the rate on petrol and diesel from 57.95p per litre to 52.95p.
In the 2022 spring statement, it was described as a temporary measure. The government stated the 5p cut would end on 23 March 2024 “as part of the government’s commitment to fiscal responsibility and ensuring trust and confidence in our national finances”.
However, Hunt announced that it will remain in place for another year. This is despite fuel prices now being comfortably lower than they were during the energy crisis.
These two measures have been a major drain on public finances.
Together, they will cost the Treasury £3.1bn in 2024-25, with a cumulative cost of around £90bn since 2010, according to official figures released by the Office for Budget Responsibility.
Analysis performed by the Social Market Foundation (SMF) in the run up to the spring budget places the cumulative figure far higher, at £130bn.
The thinktank adds that the cost of maintaining fuel duty freezes would rise to more than £200bn by 2030 – “enough to fund the entire NHS for a year”.
With the government under pressure from the right of the Conservative party and the right-leaning press to cut taxes, the fuel-duty freeze was trailed in the Times ahead of the budget as one of the “two main tax cuts” planned by the chancellor, along with a reduction in national insurance.
The Sun claimed responsibility for Hunt’s continued fuel duty freeze, due to the newspaper’s long-standing “Keep It Down” campaign, which it runs with the climate-sceptic lobbyist and Reform Party London mayoral candidate Howard Cox. A recent Sun editorial stated:
“Seven Tory chancellors have cursed us for it. To them it has ‘cost’ £90bn in tax they would love to have spent.”
Instead, the Sun points to the benefits for “British motorists”. Pro-motoring lobbyists have argued that a fuel-duty cut is a necessary bulwark against the “war on motorists” taking place in the UK. The government has absorbed this message, with prime minister Rishi Sunak announcing last year he was “slamming the brakes on the war on motorists”.
The government describes its fuel duty freeze as part of its efforts to “support people with the cost of living”.
The opposition Labour Party has also backed the fuel-duty freeze on these grounds. Last year, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves threw her weight behind it to help the “many families and businesses reliant on their cars”.
Yet analysis by the SMF shows that, despite rhetoric that emphasises benefits for ordinary, hard-working people, fuel-duty cuts disproportionately benefit wealthier people. This is because they are more likely to own cars and the cars they own are more likely to be less fuel-efficient models, such as SUVs.
As a result, the thinktank says maintaining the 2022 fuel-duty cut will save the UK’s richest people around three times as much money as the nation’s poorest.
Moreover, analysis by the RAC Foundation at the end of 2023 found that the government’s cuts to fuel prices had not all been passed onto consumers. Instead, it concluded that fossil-fuel retailers had kept savings from lower wholesale costs for themselves, leaving drivers “paying 10p [per litre] more than they should be”.
Meanwhile, the cost of bus and coach fares has risen far more than the cost of running a car, as rail fares in England and Wales increased by 5% this year.
The SMF has proposed that investment in public transport would be a more effective way to save households money.
Others have suggested that such investments could also be a major driver of economic growth. For example, government advisors at the National Infrastructure Commission argued last year that the UK should invest £22bn in mass transit schemes outside London in the coming years.
Instead, the most significant public-transport policy the government has introduced in recent months has been cancelling the northern leg of the HS2 train line.
Air passenger duty
Hunt also announced an increase in air passenger duty on “non-economy” passengers as a revenue-raising measure to help pay for tax cuts elsewhere.
As a result, those flying business class, premium economy, first class or in private jets will pay a higher price for plane tickets.
This policy will raise between £110m and £140m annually from 2025 through to 2029, according to government figures.
The budget document explains that this is a measure to bring air passenger duty in line with high inflation and maintain its value in real terms.
Nevertheless, it emphasises that for the 70% of passengers flying economy, or on short-haul flights, “rates will remain frozen” in order to “keep the cost of flying down”.
In fact, in 2021 when Sunak was chancellor, the government cut air passenger duty in half for domestic flights, making air travel cheaper within the UK. Reversing this change would bring in an extra £69m to the Treasury, according to the Campaign for Better Transport.
Campaigners have proposed a more expansive “frequent flyer levy” in order to actively discourage flying and cut emissions from aviation, which accounts for around 3% of UK emissions.
According to New Economics Foundation modelling, this could have raised £4bn in revenues in 2022.
As it stands, the government has no explicit plans to reduce demand for air travel in the UK. This is despite such plans being flagged repeatedly by government climate advisors the Climate Change Committee (CCC) as a missing part of the UK’s strategy to reach net-zero.
Windfall tax
Hunt used his budget to extend the windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas companies by another year, bringing its scheduled end date to March 2029.
This was despite opposition from Scottish Conservatives, according to BBC News – and the energy secretary Claire Coutinho, according to Politico.
He told parliament this extension would raise £1.5bn. However, he did not say what this additional money would be spent on.
He added that the “energy profits levy”, as the windfall tax is known, would be abolished “should market prices fall to their historic norm for a sustained period of time”.
In a statement, Kate Mulvany, principal consultant at consultancy Cornwall Insight, said that the move “could be seen as positive for decarbonisation if the resulting profits are used to deliver the UK’s net-zero plan”, but added:
“Yet, without a solid transition strategy away from the UK’s oil and gas dependence and no assurance that tax revenues will directly support decarbonisation initiatives, the potential upheaval in investment could outweigh the benefits.”
Ahead of the budget, both the Times and Bloomberg reported that the tax extension was being described as one of the measures that could help fund Hunt’s 2p cut in national insurance.
Labour has also proposed extending the tax by a year, if elected to power, Politico reported. Additionally, Labour intends to raise the levy on oil-and-gas company profits from 75% to 78%. It has pledged to spend the money raised on low-carbon investments.
Oil-and-gas trade group Offshore Energies UK has called the Labour proposal “alarming” and claimed that it could lead to job losses in the sector. (See Carbon Brief’s factcheck of misleading claims surrounding North Sea oil and gas.)
Elsewhere in his budget speech, Hunt did not commit to any other changes on fossil-fuel investment policies.
This was to the dismay of many environmental groups and energy experts, who had urged the chancellor to commit to new measures to end reliance on oil and gas. In a statement, Esin Serin, policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said:
“The chancellor should be making more of the tax system to drive the transition away from fossil fuels.”
Clean technology
Hunt announced that the government is buying two nuclear sites from Hitachi for £160m, in a move reportedly aimed at quickly delivering nuclear expansion plans.
The sites are at Wylfa in Anglesey, Wales and Oldbury-on-Severn in South Gloucestershire. The decision follows a period of uncertainty for Wylfa, after the closure of the previous nuclear power plant at the site in 2015.
Hitachi had planned to build a new 2.9 gigawatt (GW) nuclear plant on the site for a reported £20bn. However, the Japanese conglomerate announced it was shelving the plans in 2019.
Additionally, Hunt announced that the government has moved onto the next stage in its competition to build “small modular reactors” (SMRs). There are now six companies that have been invited to submit their initial tender responses by June.
The chancellor confirmed a £120m increase in funding for the “green industries growth accelerator” (GIGA), a fund designed to support the expansion of ”strong and sustainable clean energy supply chains” in the UK. The increase was announced earlier this week.
This will bring the total amount in the fund to £1.1bn, according to the budget documents, up from £960m announced in the autumn statement in November.
GIGA is designed to support carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS), engineered greenhouse gas removals (GGRs) and hydrogen, offshore wind and electricity networks, as well as civil nuclear power.
The fund will be split between these sectors, with around £390m earmarked for electricity networks and offshore wind supply chains, and around £390m earmarked for CCUS and hydrogen, the treasury’s note stated.
In January, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero announced £300m will be used to fund the production of a type of nuclear fuel known as “high-assay low-enriched uranium” (HALEU). Currently, Russia is the only producer of HALEU, so the domestic production plan is designed to help end “Russia’s reign”, the government states, as well as to support the UK’s wider plans to deliver “up to” 24GW of nuclear power by 2050.
In a statement, trade association RenewableUK’s chief executive Dan McGrail said:
“The increase in GIGA funding to secure further private investment in green manufacturing jobs will enable us to supply more goods and services to projects here and abroad. It’s also good to see that nearly £400m of that funding will be used specifically to grow our offshore wind supply chain and electricity networks.”
Additionally, earlier this week the government trailed £360m for manufacturing projects and for research and development. This includes almost £73m in combined government and industry investment in the development of electric vehicle (EV) technology.
This will be supported by more than £36m of government funding awarded through the UK’s “advanced propulsion centre”, the Treasury notes, including four projects that are developing technologies for battery EVs.
Renewable auction budget
Alongside the budget, the government also confirmed key details of its sixth auction (AR6) round for new renewable energy projects, including a pot worth just over £1bn.
This follows last year’s fifth auction round, which failed to secure any new offshore wind projects for the first time.
The budget documents said the £1bn budget for AR6 is the “largest ever” and includes £800m specifically for offshore wind.
If winning projects bid at the maximum price for offshore wind announced last year of £73 per megawatt hour (MWh) in 2012 prices, then the £800m budget would only be sufficient to secure just 3GW of new capacity, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
However, consultancy LCP Delta said it could be sufficient to secure 4-6GW of new capacity, implying that it assumes winning projects will bid at prices around £50-60/MWh. In a statement, it added:
“This is certainly a welcome development given last year’s failed auction. However, it may not be enough to get the UK back on track with time running out to build the additional 23GW needed [to meet its 50GW target] by 2030.”
The government has a target of building 50GW of offshore wind by 2030. There is currently around 15GW in operation and another 14GW either under construction, awarded a contract or having already taken a final investment decision, according to trade association Energy UK.
This means another 21GW of new capacity would be needed to hit the 50GW by 2030 target, implying a need for at least 10GW in each of the next two auction rounds, according to industry body Energy UK.
In addition to the £800m pot for offshore wind, the government has confirmed the upcoming auction will include up to £105m for “pot two” technologies including onshore wind, solar, energy from waste with combined heat and power and others, as well as £120m for “pot three” technologies including floating offshore wind, geothermal, tidal stream, wave and others.
Electric cars
Ahead of the budget, an open letter by the motoring lobby group FairCharge called on the chancellor to end the higher rates of VAT on public electric car charging, when compared to home charging.
People who charge their EVs at home only pay 5% VAT on their bills, but the 38% of the population without driveways who would have to use public chargers pay the full VAT rate of 20%, presenting a “charging injustice”, the group told the Daily Mirror.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders also called for VAT on public EV charging points to be cut, to be in line with the VAT on home charging points.
Speaking to the Times, Mike Hawes, chief executive of the group, said that high VAT rates on public charging points were part of a “triple tax barrier” to more private ownership of EVs.
He also urged the chancellor to reverse proposed excise duty changes that treat upmarket electric cars as luxuries rather than essentials, increasing car taxes by up to £2,000, and to cut the 20% VAT that new car buyers have to pay on new EVs.
However, during the budget, Hunt did not mention any new measures to boost EVs.
The post UK spring budget 2024: Key climate and energy announcements appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Marcelo Behar is the COP30 Special Envoy for Bioeconomy and co-founder of Ambition Loop Brazil.
Can we be the generation to end the rampant deforestation that is harming the planet’s ecosystems and climate? Back in February, the Brazilian COP30 Presidency opened a call for submissions on its proposed Roadmap for Halting Deforestation and Forest Degradation, which closes today.
What might look like a technical step quickly drew significant attention, with more than 100 responses submitted by governments, civil society organisations, businesses and other stakeholders.
This level of engagement is telling. It reflects both the urgency of the issue and the recognition that this process could shape whether the global goal to end deforestation by 2030 finally moves from ambition to delivery.
As a Brazilian, I see this moment with both pride and realism. Brazil has played a central role in elevating forests on the climate agenda, and the COP30 Presidency has shown leadership in carrying this issue forward far beyond the Belém summit.
COP30 rainforest fund unlikely to make first payments until 2028
But last year also offered a sobering signal. Despite strong efforts from the Brazilian Presidency, the proposed roadmap did not secure consensus in the final outcome of COP30. That outcome underlined a simple truth: while there is broad recognition of the importance of forests, agreeing on how to move forward remains complex. The road ahead is still long and likely uneven.
That is precisely why this moment matters.
Progress on commitments falling short
The world is not short of commitments. Over the past decade, countries have repeatedly pledged to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. There is a growing body of experience through the REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) programme, including the emergence of jurisdictional approaches that are beginning to connect forest protection with finance at scale.
Initiatives such as the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership have helped sustain political attention and cooperation among countries, while national strategies continue to evolve, and Indigenous Peoples and local communities remain at the forefront of protecting forests.
And yet, progress is still falling short.
The gap is not only one of alignment. It is also one of political will – and of having a credible, shared pathway that brings together these efforts in a way that drives implementation at scale.
Civil society is watching this process closely. For many organisations working across climate, nature and conservation, this is not just another initiative – it is a priority. After years of advocating to end deforestation, there is a strong sense that this moment cannot be lost. The expectation is clear: this roadmap must move beyond intention and help unlock real progress.
The opportunity now is to ensure that it does exactly that. This cannot become another report.
Implementation key to roadmap success
A detailed assessment of pathways and challenges, however valuable, will not be enough to change outcomes on the ground. What is needed is an implementation roadmap, one that connects existing commitments, aligns incentives and provides clarity on how to move from ambition to delivery between now and 2030.
The consultation process is an important step. But its value will ultimately be judged by what it produces.
If the roadmap is to succeed, several priorities should guide its development.
-
With no COP30 roadmap, hopes of saving forests hinge on voluntary initiatives
The world is falling short of a target to halt deforestation by 2030, but the “Amazon COP” failed to agree a concrete global plan to save rainforests despite backing by over 80 nations -
Deep in the Amazon, forest protection cash must vie with glitter of illegal gold
The TFFF fund launched at COP30 aims to pay communities to protect the rainforest, but will it be enough? On French Guiana’s border with Brazil, the profits to be had from mining are far higher
First: policy. It must be designed as a tool for implementation. That means going beyond diagnosis to define concrete action: who needs to act, by when, and how progress will be tracked. The solutions are not new, but coordination has been missing.
Second: accountability. It should bring coherence to the existing landscape. The value of a roadmap lies not in creating new commitments, but in connecting what already exists: global targets, REDD+ experience, national action plans, Indigenous leadership and supply chain initiatives. Reducing fragmentation is essential to accelerating delivery.
Early milestones needed
Third: finance. It must be grounded in economic reality. Halting deforestation will not happen without addressing the incentives that underpin it. Aligning public finance, private investment, and market demand with forest protection is not a technical detail; it is the core of the transition.
Fourth: transparency. Legitimacy will depend on openness. A credible roadmap cannot be developed behind closed doors. Governments, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, civil society, business and finance actors all have a role to play and must be able to see how their contributions shape the outcome.
Fifth: urgency. Progress must be visible in 2026. Without early milestones, momentum will fade. By the time climate negotiators gather in Bonn mid-year, the roadmap should have a clear structure, priority actions and growing political backing.
Governments must deliver on the plan
Finally, countries themselves will need to step forward. Last year’s outcome showed that support alone is not enough. Delivering this roadmap will require active political engagement. That means governments that are willing not only to participate in the process, but to help shape and implement it.
Brazil has created an important opening. It has also taken on the responsibility that comes with leadership: to help turn a widely supported idea into something that can deliver in practice.
The commitment to end deforestation by 2030 already exists. What is still needed is a path. And the courage to walk it.
The post How a Brazil-led roadmap can rescue global pledge to halt deforestation appeared first on Climate Home News.
How a Brazil-led roadmap can rescue global pledge to halt deforestation
A US biofuels producer that exports “green” aviation fuel to Britain and the European Union has purchased beef tallow from a Brazilian supply chain tied to illegal deforestation in the Amazon, shipping data and a court document show.
Diamond Green Diesel (DGD), a major provider of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel, has sourced hundreds of thousands of tonnes of beef tallow from Brazil, alongside waste fats from other sources, over the last three years, as global demand for biofuel feedstocks soars.
Reporting by Unearthed and nonprofit investigative outlet Repórter Brasil reveals DGD’s connection to a rendering plant that has sourced supplies from a meatpacker fined for buying cattle from an illegally deforested Amazon reserve. A previous investigation by Reuters and Repórter Brasil found DGD had bought animal fat from two other rendering factories linked to supplies of cattle from illegal ranches.
The newly identified factory, Pacífico Indústria e Comércio de Óleos e Proteínas Ltda, which is based in Cacoal, a small city in the far-western Amazon state of Rondônia, has been supplied by Rondônia meatpacker DistriBoi, a 2022 court document shows.
DistriBoi was fined two years ago for illegally purchasing cattle from the state’s Jaci-Paraná conservation reserve, which has been ravaged by illegal ranching.
There is no suggestion that the companies involved were aware of deforestation at farm level. But the findings suggest a traceability gap in the supply chain of feedstocks for sustainable fuels, where cattle by-products are subject to less oversight than the primary commodities of the cattle industry, such as meat and leather.
Pristine rainforest blanketed the Jaci-Paraná reserve when it was created 30 years ago to protect traditional forest activities such as rubber tapping and nut harvesting.
Today, illegal ranching has devoured nearly 80% of its forest cover and it has become a notorious example of the devastation wrought by land grabbers in the world’s largest rainforest.
“The damage to biodiversity has been devastating,” said local Indigenous activist Neidinha Suruí, who featured in the 2025 Emmy Award-winning documentary “O Território”.
“It is sad to see what has been lost,” she said.
Greener air travel?
The “renewable diesel” and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) that are being exported by DGD – a joint venture between US oil refiner Valero Energy Corp and Texas-based Darling Ingredients – are classed as “green” because they are made from feedstocks classified as waste, including tallow, which consists of fat separated from cattle carcasses.
Many governments and airlines are pinning their hopes for greener flying on SAF made with organic waste materials, including Britain which introduced a compulsory blending requirement last year.
Top green jet fuel producer linked to suspect waste-oil supply chain
Air travel accounts for about 2.5% of global carbon emissions and in contrast to other transport sectors that can be electrified, shrinking aviation’s carbon footprint is much more difficult.
Waste products such as beef tallow and used cooking oil (UCO) are considered the greenest of viable SAF feedstocks on the grounds that they do not create competition with foodstuffs such as soy oil or palm oil, nor increase deforestation pressure.
But there is concern that the global rush to ramp up SAF use could indirectly exacerbate deforestation pressure by increasing demand for feedstocks such as tallow and UCO.
That could increase the profit margins of cattle ranches – including illegal ones – and have other unintended consequences, such as encouraging fraud in supply chains, as Climate Home News has reported.
An investigation published in March by Climate Home News and Swedish broadcaster SVT found that Finnish biofuels giant Neste is sourcing key ingredients for its SAF from an opaque supply chain that enables fresh palm oil to be passed off as used, waste oil.
Because tallow is classified as waste by regulators in markets including the UK and EU, the green fuel industry’s most widely used certification scheme – International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) – does not assess whether forests were cleared to rear the cattle that produced it in the first place.
-
Amazon fires threaten initiatives to raise cash for rainforest protection
Brazil’s Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) and other innovative finance tools will be showcased at COP30, but surging wildfires in the Amazon pose a threat to their success, climate experts warn -
Deep in the Amazon, forest protection cash must vie with glitter of illegal gold
The TFFF fund launched at COP30 aims to pay communities to protect the rainforest, but will it be enough? On French Guiana’s border with Brazil, the profits to be had from mining are far higher -
Funding gap threatens next round of IPCC climate science reports, chair warns
The latest IPCC session in Bangkok was clouded by persistent differences over when its flagship reports should be published and concern over cost-cutting proposals
This allows tallow from cattle to qualify as a sustainable feedstock for green fuels, even if they were raised on illegally deforested land.
“There is clearly an oversight within the rules if the products, in this case animal tallow, are originally coming from deforested land,” said Cian Delaney, a campaign coordinator at the clean transport and energy advocacy group Transport & Environment.
That means government SAF mandates aimed at stemming air travel emissions could help boost the earnings of cattle ranchers linked to illegal deforestation in Brazil, where ranching and other forms of agriculture have been the main driver of forest loss.
Land grabbers clear way for ranchers
Once covered by an unbroken rainforest canopy, Rondônia’s Jaci-Paraná reserve has been decimated by illegal deforestation driven by cattle ranching – a major cause of tree loss in the Amazon.
Land-grabbers have seized – often violently – and cleared more than three-quarters of its forest for pasture, as ranching has steadily advanced into the southern Amazon.
Suruí, the local Indigenous activist, said companies that buy products derived from illegal activities perpetuate environmental crimes in the rainforest.
“If there were no meat processors buying illegally sourced cattle, there would be no land grabbing and no deforestation,” Suruí told Repórter Brasil, which partnered on the new investigation with Unearthed, and a team of journalists supported by JournalismFund Europe.
Lawsuits and linked supply chains
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pledged to end all deforestation in the country by 2030, in part by strengthening environmental enforcement in the world’s biggest rainforest.
In Rondônia, authorities have launched more than 50 lawsuits related to land-grabbing and deforestation in the Jaci-Paraná reserve alone. Local slaughterhouse DistriBoi is named in 31 of the lawsuits, including the 2024 case in which it was fined.
According to the 2022 court document, which concerned an unrelated labour dispute, lawyers for Pacífico refer to DistriBoi as the rendering plant’s “largest supplier of raw materials”.
US-based DGD received almost 15,000 tonnes of tallow from Pacífico from 2023 to 2025 at its Texas refinery, as well as used cooking oil from various countries and sources, according to trade database Panjiva.
Darling Ingredients is also a parent company of Pacífico since its 2022 acquisition of Brazilian rendering company FASA Group.
A spokesperson for Darling Ingredients denied that Pacífico had sourced beef residues from DistriBoi’s Ji-Paraná slaughterhouse – one of two that the meatpacker operates in Rondônia.
“The rendering plant Pacífico does not source any materials from the slaughterhouse Distriboi in Ji-Paraná,” the spokesperson said in an emailed response, without providing evidence or commenting directly on the content of the 2022 court document.
Darling did not respond to a follow-up question about Distriboi’s other slaughterhouse in the region, which, according to cattle transfer documents, has also bought from a farm that has illegally cleared forest within the extractive reserve.
“Our relationships are typically with the slaughterhouse, several levels removed from cattle ranchers. Regardless, we are committed to ensuring our raw materials are deforestation free. We expect our raw material suppliers to abide by our supplier code of conduct. In addition, we are in the process of requiring all [the] raw materials to attest that their material is deforestation free,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
DistriBoi said in an apparent reference to the pending Jaci-Paraná lawsuits that “the matters mentioned … are already under review, including by higher courts”. It has previously denied wrongdoing. The company’s statement did not address a question about its commercial ties to Pacífico.
Valero Energy, the major refiner that co-owns DGD with Darling Ingredients, did not respond to requests for comment, nor did DGD itself.
From slaughterhouse to SAF
In an effort to rein in carbon emissions from air travel, regulators in Britain and the EU have mandated progressively increasing SAF blending quotas in the years ahead, creating a new market for feedstocks including beef tallow.
Brazil’s exports of tallow to the US have risen sharply in recent years, up from less than 10,000 tonnes in 2021 to almost 400,000 tonnes last year, according to Panjiva, reflecting growing demand for biofuels like SAF.
In the UK, Europe’s biggest aviation market by seat capacity, jet fuel was required to contain 2% SAF by the end of 2025, rising to 10% by 2030 and 22% by 2040.
DGD shipped 134,000 tonnes of SAF worth nearly $90 million from Texas to the UK in 2025, according to trade data from Panjiva. The company also exported smaller amounts of renewable diesel to Britain.
The EU received biofuels, including small quantities of SAF, worth over $1.1 billion from DGD’s Texas refinery last year, figures show.
Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?
Unearthed’s investigation could not identify which airlines or airports buy DGD’s SAF once it arrives in Britain.
Valero, DGD’s other parent company, is positioning itself as a key player in the transition to lower-carbon fuels in the UK, where it markets its renewable diesel under the Texaco brand.
It has been an active participant in SAF policy discussions and has criticised the government’s planned cap on waste fat sources in SAF, calling them “the world’s most cost-effective production route for SAF” in a submission to parliament.
Helping to cut emissions?
Even tighter oversight over SAF feedstocks is crucial to ensure that blending mandates such as Britain’s are effectively lowering emissions, said Anna Krajinska, a director at Transport & Environment UK.
Forests store vast amounts of carbon; when they are cut down or burned this carbon is released into the atmosphere.
“If there’s tallow coming from land that’s been deforested, then those emissions might be so high that you might not be getting to the greenhouse gas reduction threshold,” Krajinska said.
But as the world’s appetite for flying keeps on growing, some experts say SAF is the only viable means to reduce aviation emissions at present.
Referring to the deforestation links identified in Unearthed’s investigation, Wouter Dewulf, an aviation economist at Belgium’s University of Antwerp, said it “would be important to assess how large this infraction is”.
“I’m quite sure you have aberrations,” Dewulf added. “But biofuels are the best alternative for the moment.”
T&E’s Delaney said there needs to be less opacity and better oversight from regulatory authorities. “Right now, there are just too many blindspots,” he added.
The post UK imports of “green” jet fuel linked to Amazon deforestation appeared first on Climate Home News.
UK imports of “green” jet fuel linked to Amazon deforestation
A company has proposed to build a crude oil pipeline crossing the Canadian border near where the long-contested project would have entered the United States.
No project better embodies the nation’s wild swings in climate and energy policy than the Keystone XL pipeline.
-
Climate Change8 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases8 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Renewable Energy6 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits