Bioeconomy Development Levelling the playing field How the BDO Zone Initiative can help expand the rural bioeconomy By Jordan Solomon O ne of the biggest challenges facing Canada’s bioeconomy is attract-ing investment for new bio-based products and manufacturing plants and de-risking that investment. Specifically, rural communities lack the infrastructure and tools to accelerate investment in the bioeconomy. In an effort to address these issues, in 2019, Ecostrat developed the new Cana-dian Standards for Biomass Supply Chain Risk (BCSR Standards), and, in 2020, launched the Bioeconomy Development Opportunity (BDO) Zone Initiative. This initiative is an economic development platform that enables local communities to deploy powerful economic development tools – BDO Zone Ratings – to achieve the goal of driving, accelerating and catalyz-ing bio-based investment and commercial project development in BDO Zone-desig-nated regions for new biofuel, renewable chemical, biogas and bioproduct plants. The BDO Zone Initiative is a certifica-tion and regional risk rating program that accelerates bio-based project development in economically distressed communities. BDO Zone Ratings do this by carrying out credible technical evaluations on feedstock and infrastructure risk, and then enabling communities to effectively and easily sig-nal and promote key feedstock and infra-structure “success” characteristics valued by bio-based developers and investors around the world. ‘AA’ or ‘A’ rated BDO Zones identify the best areas in North America for low-risk bioeconomy project development. A BDO Zone Rating signals that a region has undergone rigorous and extensive due diligence using over 100 standardized, transparent, and validated risk indicators based on the BSCR Standards for biobased investment. BDO Zone ratings enable distressed/ru-ral communities to add capacity to support The City of Melville, Sask., became the first BDO Zone in North America in November 2020. Photo courtesy City of Melville. deployment of innovative technology and infrastructure, and this drives regional eco-nomic development to areas where pov-erty has been persistent for generations, harnessing natural resources to support bio-based manufacturing and renewable energy production. BDO Zones do three key things very well: they help project developers identify new project locations; they help investors more quickly deploy capital in these re-gions; and they help communities create new clean energy jobs. Oftentimes, small communities don’t have the platform or the credibility to promote themselves as great areas for future bio-based develop-ment. BDO Zone designations change that, and raise the flag over these communities as some of the best areas in the country to build the next bio-based plant. AFTER A RATING BDO Zone designations also enable real one-one-one conversations with hundreds of actual bio-based project developers. The designation and certification of a BDO Zone is just the first step of the pro-cess. Once a community is issued an ‘AA’ or ‘A’ BDO Zone Rating, a BDO Zone Local Development Leader (LDL) is appointed to be responsible for the inbound inquiries and deal-flow generated by the designa-tion. The BDO Zone Rating is then pub-lished on bdozone.org. Inbound project development “deal-flow” is generated by promotion of the BDO Zone designation to over 50 industry publications worldwide. On April 5, 2022, the BDO Zone Ini-tiative officially launched BDO Zone-CONNECT: a powerful market-making platform that puts LDLs in front of hun-dreds of biomass-based project developers globally. By enabling “real one-one-one conversations with real bio-based project developers,” BDO ZoneCONNECT gives BDO Zone communities the economic development power and reach of major organizations with significant budgets to deploy. It levels the playing field for small rural communities who want to attract a new bio-based manufacturing plant. Along with Siloam Springs, Ark., the City of Melville was one of the first BDO Zone communities to be featured on the BDO ZoneCONNECT webinar series. “When we look at potential industry, we are not interested in industry for the sake of it. We want to match and partner with industries that will achieve a mutually ben-eficial outcome,” says Ron McCullough, city manager for the City of Melville. “The BDO Zone […] has opened the door to op-portunities. The opportunities started with conversations and our network continues SPRING 2022 18 Canadian BIOMASS
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