Enhancing the implementation of quality and sustainability standards for solid biofuelslope

Duration: 2011 – 2014 ● Client: European Commission (IEE) ● WIP Expertise: Coordination, Market uptake, Policy development ● www.solidstandards.eu

The SolidStandards project addresses ongoing and recent developments related to solid biofuel quality and sustainability issues, in particular the development of related standards and certification systems.

The European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) and the European Commission are responsible for the standardization, respectively for policy decisions regarding solid biofuels quality and sustainability criteria. These initiatives largely impact on the work of practitioners along the whole biomass supply chain while the underlying processes and their outcomes are complicated and sometimes intransparent. There is also the risk that the solid biofuel industry is not involved sufficiently in standardization or legislation procedures.

In the SolidStandards project, solid biofuel industry players will be informed and trained in the field of standards and certification and their feedback will be collected and provided to the related standardization committees and policy makers.

The core of the action is the organization of 35 training events for producers, traders and end-users of solid biofuels and actors involved in standardization and certification. Trainings aim at increasing the target group’s ability to implement quality and sustainability standardization and certification.
The consortium will work with 7 selected solid biofuel companies and support them in implementing European quality standards. The process will be documented and shall serve as a guideline for standard implementation.

In order to contribute to the discussion on binding sustainability criteria for solid biofuels, project activities include the organization of a workshop with key stakeholders to provide input to the EC decision on the need for mandatory requirements for the sustainability of solid biofuels. Taking into account the decision of the EC, existing sustainability schemes will be analysed, reviewed, assessed for compliance with the EC decision and tested in a number of practical case studies.

Finally, the project contains several tools for feedback collection from the industry. This feedback will be collected, analysed and provided to European and national standardization organizations in Europe.