Special Report Quality Matters Part II By Gord Murray the surface, biofuels seem more expensive than fossil fuels. A litre of ethanol costs more than a litre of gas-oline. A ton of wood pellets costs more than a ton of coal. But is this a fair comparison? What would fossil fuels cost if producers had to pay for the environmental damage they caused? How much would coal and gasoline producers have to raise their prices if they had to account for the cost of reversing global warming and acid rain? Despite their higher initial cost, global biofuel consumption is increasing. This is because biofuels are cleaner than fossil fuels, and have a lower greenhouse gas impact. Governments have implemented various mechanisms to support biofuel use, either through mandates or subsidies. However, for governments to support biofuel use, they require evidence that biofuels do indeed provide GHG benefits and that they are pro-duced sustainably. This has led to the rise of third party sustain-ability certification in the biofuels industry. The forest industry adopted third party sustainability certi-fication some twenty years ahead of the biofuels industry. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) are two well-known organizations with certification programs that provide third par-ty verification of sustainable forest management as well as chain of custody certification to demonstrate to the end consumer that finished forest products come from sustainably managed forests. A common feature of these programs is that they have multi-stakeholder governance, which includes participation of forest industry, environmental interests, social interests, and ab-original interests. Canada leads all countries with 166 million hectares of certified forests, a figure that is nearly four times more than second place United States at 47 million hectares. Sustainability certification for liquid biofuels – i.e. ethanol and biodiesel – began with the European Union’s 2009 Renewable En-ergy Directive (RED). The RED required mandatory sustainability criteria for liquid biofuels, but was silent regarding solid biofuels, thus leaving it to individual EU member countries to decide how to address the sustainability of solid biofuels. According to the RED, for liquid biofuels to be considered sustainable, they must achieve greenhouse gas savings of at least 35% in comparison to fossil fu-els, rising to 50% in 2017. In 2018, it rises again to 60% but only for new production plants. All life cycle emissions are taken into account when calculating greenhouse gas savings. This includes emissions from cultivation, processing, and transport. Biofuels cannot be grown in areas converted from land with previously high carbon stock such as wetlands or forests. Biofuels cannot be produced from raw materials obtained from land with high biodi-versity such as primary forests or highly biodiverse grasslands. One On way for companies to demonstrate that their biofuels comply with the criteria is to participate in voluntary certification programs that have been recognized by the European Commission. For the pur-pose of certification, the whole production chain from the farm-er growing the feedstock up to the biofuel producer or trader is checked by independent auditors. Schemes are mostly privately run but recognized as valid by the European Commission. Present-ly there are 16 sustainability certification schemes for liquid biofu-els recognized by the European Commission. The European Union remains the largest market for solid bio-fuels, especially wood pellets, consuming about 20 million metric tons of wood pellets per year, half for heat and half for power. The European Commission has been silent regarding sustainabil-ity criteria for solid biofuels, leaving it to member countries to de-termine their own rules. Unfortunately for industry participants, this has resulted in each EU member country developing its own sustainability rules with such rules varying significantly from country to country. Electrical power utilities must demonstrate that they are complying with sustainability rules of each country in which they operate in order to receive government subsidies. European power utilities initially developed individual in-house procedures to verify the sustainability of their wood pellet purchases. However, they eventually decided that it would be more efficient to have a single pan-European sustainability certi-fication system, thus leading to the development of the Sustain-able Biomass Program (SBP). Today SBP’s members include Drax Power, Dong Energy, Eon, Engie, Hofor, RWE, and Vattenfall. The SBP certification program was initially developed for wood pel-lets and has recently been extended to cover wood chips. THE SBP FRAMEWORK INCLUDES SIX STANDARDS: • Feedstock Compliance Standard: the principles, criteria and indicators defining the management system needed to verify that feedstock is legal and sustainable; • Verification of SBP-compliant Feedstock: the method for the evaluation of the risk associated with feedstock; • Certification Systems: the requirements on certification bod-ies in verifying compliance by SBP certificate holders; • Chain of Custody: the requirements for documentation showing custody, control, and transfer of certified material; • Collection and Communication of Data: the methodology for collection and communication of data along the supply chain; and • Energy and Carbon Balance Calculation: requirements for generators regarding energy and carbon balance calculations. JULY/AUGUST 2017 10 Canadian BIOMASS
Canadian Biomass July/August 2017: Page 10
