Largest European energy companies have united in an industrial initiative "The sustainable biomass partnership (SPB)" to control the production of solid biofuels and its compliance with the standards and in March, 2014 launched a new sustainable biomass certification scheme.
The SPB was founded in 2013 by major European utilities that use biomass such as Danish energy firm Dong, UK power generator Drax, German utility Eon, French utility GDF Suez, German utility RWE and Swedish state-owned Vattenfall. In general, the main target of the SPB is to create standards and processes necessary to demonstrate compliance with legal, regulatory and sustainability requirements. The program involves five basic standards regarding ecological compatibility of feedstock, supply chain, conditions of certification of companies, etc.
Thus, the aim of the program is to create conditions that allow consumers of wood granules to be assured of the legality and sustainability of biomass and know the amount of energy and carbon that was used for biofuel production and its supply to the generator.
The program is the first draft version that establishes uniform requirements for the operation of utility companies on biomass and is now at the piloting stage. The authors of the program claim that they will consider all feedback received from the pilots in order to finish all preparatory work and begin certification in the summer of the current year.
It is known that there are similar certification schemes in Europe. In particular, Forest Stewardship Council and Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes. However, these programmes do not yet cover all the requirements of biomass users and are limited in some key forest-source areas. So, the SPB has been exploring with them to what extent that might be possible in the future.
Thus, it is important for the program to develop a framework that recognizes biomass drawn from certified forests but provides a mechanism for assessing and mitigating risk for biomass from non-certified sources too. Also the SBP will focus on certification of fuel-producing facilities rather than forest-level certification.
The certification criteria are based on the estimates of the UK experts concerning the timber category B criteria and include both European and national requirements and is compared with the Dutch NTA 8080 biomass sustainability criteria.
The certification is a voluntary mechanism and will not be a legal requirement, but it allows companies to demonstrate to their customers that their product is legally and sustainably produced. Because demonstrating sustainability by companies is one of the most important problems on the European biomass market, availability of such scheme is an important factor for the company to be success.
Therefore, existence of the sustainable biomass certification scheme is an important step towards creation of new operating conditions of the European biomass market. The analysts of Ukrainian Biofuel Portal pellets-wood.com are convinced that biomass certification will allow companies that produce solid biofuels to confirm its compliance with legal, regulatory and sustainability requirements that will have a positive impact on their image and success.
Author: Ivan Prokhorov
