European Commission Finds No Fraud in Chinese Biofuel Imports

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European Commission Finds No Fraud in Chinese Biofuel Imports

The European Commission, acting on allegations raised by German authorities in March 2023, has failed to confirm any fraud related to the sustainability and emissions savings of biofuels imported from China. “The Commission identified some systemic weaknesses in the way certification audits have been conducted and is taking action to address these issues. Nevertheless, the […]

“The Commission identified some systemic weaknesses in the way certification audits have been conducted and is taking action to address these issues. Nevertheless, the information gathered did not allow confirmation of the existence of fraud”, the Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy said in a statement online.

“The German authorities may perform additional verifications or investigations if they wish to do so”.

The investigation was conducted under Article 30 (10) of the Renewable Energy Directive of 2018, amended October 2023.

To be eligible for European Union financial support and to count toward the fulfilment of renewable energy targets, biofuels must meet certain criteria that protect biodiversity and soil and prevent deforestation.

The amount of greenhouse gas emissions avoided by using biofuels must also meet certain thresholds. On the lower end, emission savings must be at least 50 percent for biofuels consumed in the transport sector. On the upper end, as updated in the 2023 directive, savings must be at least 80 percent for electricity, heating and cooling production from biomass fuels.

“In close cooperation with the German authorities, it [the Commission] collected input from numerous stakeholders and reviewed audit reports from the voluntary certification scheme that certified the economic operators concerned”, the statement said.

It added, “To tackle the risk of fraud in the biofuels market, the Commission is undertaking a range of actions in the short and medium term, in particular in areas where the Implementing Regulation on sustainability certification (EU/2022/996) can be further strengthened”.

The Commission has formed a working group with EU states under the Committee on the Sustainability of Biofuels, Bioliquids and Biomass Fuels to review the certification law. The Commission expects to finalize the new text in “early 2026”.

The statement added, “The working group has made good progress on additional measures that could better prevent fraud in the future”.

“Furthermore, the Commission is discussing with EU countries on a timeline for the full mandatory deployment of the Union database for biofuels. This EU global traceability system is functional and is being used by an increasing number of operators but its mandatory systemic use by all relevant businesses is a precondition for its success”, the statement said.

“The Commission will also continue its technical work on fraud prevention and effective sustainability certification to support the voluntary schemes with the implementation of the existing rules. These rules can tackle many of the identified cases if correctly and harmoniously applied by the certification bodies.

“This work stream is also supported by the review of the current standards of voluntary schemes in cooperation with the European Co-operation for Accreditation and the accreditation bodies of the EU countries as part of the implementation of the new accreditation rules [under Article 11(1) of the Implementing Regulation on certification] by the end of 2025.

“On the basis of the review of the current standards and the experience from examining the alleged fraud cases, the Commission may request voluntary schemes to adopt and implement action plans or review the implementation of already existing plans on fraud prevention”.

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Technology is coming so fast data centers are obsolete by the time they launch

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Cisco upgrades 400G optical receiver to boost AI infrastructure throughput

“In the data center, what’s really changed in the last year or so is that with AI buildouts, there’s much, much more optics that are part of 400G and 800G. It’s not so much using 10G and 25G optics, which we still sell a ton of, for campus applications. But for AI infrastructure, the 400G and 800G optics are really the dominant optics for that application,” Gartner said. Most of the AI infrastructure builds have been for training models, especially in hyperscaler environments, Gartner said. “I expect, towards the tail end of this year, we’ll start to see more enterprises deploying AI infrastructure for inference. And once they do that, because it has an Nvidia GPU attached to it, it’s going to be a 400G or 800G optic.” Core enterprise applications – such as real-time trading, high-frequency transactions, multi-cloud communications, cybersecurity analytics, network forensics, and industrial IoT – can also utilize the higher network throughput, Gartner said.

Supermicro bets big on 4-socket X14 servers to regain enterprise trust

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Moving AI workloads off the cloud? A hefty data center retrofit awaits

“If you have a very specific use case, and you want to fold AI into some of your processes, and you need a GPU or two and a server to do that, then, that’s perfectly acceptable,” he says. “What we’re seeing, kind of universally, is that most of the enterprises want to migrate to these autonomous agents and agentic AI, where you do need a lot of compute capacity.” Racks of brand-new GPUs, even without new power and cooling infrastructure, can be costly, and Schneider Electric often advises cost-conscious clients to look at previous-generation GPUs to save money. GPU and other AI-related technology is advancing so rapidly, however, that it’s hard to know when to put down stakes. “We’re kind of in a situation where five years ago, we were talking about a data center lasting 30 years and going through three refreshes, maybe four,” Carlini says. “Now, because it is changing so much and requiring more and more power and cooling you can’t overbuild and then grow into it like you used to.”

My take on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for LAN infrastructure? Highly inaccurate

Fortinet being in the leader quadrant may surprise some given they are best known as a security vendor, but the company has quietly built a broad and deep networking portfolio. I have no issue with them being considered a leader and believe for security conscious companies, Fortinet is a great option. Challenger Cisco is the only company listed as a challenger, and its movement out of the leader quadrant highlights just how inaccurate this document is. There is no vendor that sells more networking equipment in more places than Cisco, and it has led enterprise networking for decades. Several years ago, when it was a leader, I could argue the division of engineering between Meraki and Catalyst could have pushed them out, but it didn’t. So why now? At its June Cisco Live event, the company launched a salvo of innovation including AI Canvas, Cisco AI Assistant, and much more. It’s also continually improved the interoperability between Meraki and Catalyst and announced several new products. AI Canvas is a completely new take, was well received by customers at Cisco Live, and reinvents the concept of AIOps. As I stated above, because of the December cutoff time for information gathering, none of this was included, but that makes Cisco’s representation false. Also, I find this MQ very vague in its “Cautions” segment. As an example, it states: “Cisco’s product strategy isn’t well-aligned with key enterprise needs.” Some details here would be helpful. In my conversations with Cisco, which includes with Chief Product Officer and President Jeetu Patel, the company has reiterated that its strategy is to help customers be AI-ready with products that are easier to deploy and manage, more automated, and with a lower cost to run. That seems well-aligned with customer needs. If Gartner is hearing customers want networks

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John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

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