Climate Arena 2024

How can trade data help investigate new important trends in climate-damaging energy commodities?

Whether it is to show that some companies keep using unsustainable products to promote so-called “renewable fuels”, or to reveal that Europe is opening new backdoors for palm oil through increased imports of suspicious advanced biofuels, the analysis of European and national public data can often be a good starting point for identifying new, unsuspected energy trends.

The Brussels-based NGO Transport & Environment’s (T&E) analysts have been using trade data, complemented with customs records, private market data, shipping tracking data and satellite imagery to investigate Eni’s biofuels supply chain. Other T&E investigations are currently attempting to adapt a similar tracking approach to identify fraudulent cases of palm oil disguised as advanced biofuels.

This session will present T&E’s approach to trade data analysis and discuss its challenges as well as opportunities for using it in other contexts.