Earlier this month, France’s constitutional court upheld a law cutting palm oil from the country’s list of approved biofuels and eliminating associated tax exemptions. The court rejected an appeal by French energy company Total, which had invested 300 million euros to convert a crude oil refinery into a biofuel plant that would use palm oil feedstock. Mixing biofuels with fossil fuels for vehicles to burn initially seemed like an easy way to cut down on the 22% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions that stem from the transport sector. Biofuels are still expected to play an important part in hitting ambitious climate targets; to keep global warming under 1.5°C by 2100, at least 26.3% of transport’s energy mix would need to be composed of biofuels. At the same time, the unintentional environmental consequences provoked by mandatory biofuel quotas have increasingly come under scrutiny. Palm oil: economic lifeline, but environmental […]