Details

Title:

Enhancing the Implementation of Quality and Sustainability Standards for Solid Biofuels

Author(s):

Khawaja, C., Janssen, R.

Document(s):

Abstract:

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 standardisation of solid biofuels and policy decisions regarding sustainability criteria, respectively. 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 standardisation 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 standardisation committees and policy makers. The core of the action is the organisation of 35 training events for producers, traders and end­users of solid biofuels and actors involved in standardisation and certification. Trainings aim at increasing the target group’s ability to implement quality and sustainability standardisation and certification. The consortium is working with 7 selected solid biofuel companies and supporting 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 organisation of a workshop with key stakeholders to provide input to the EC decision on the need for mandatory requirements of the sustainability of solid biofuels. Taking into account the decision of the EC, existing sustainability schemes will be analyzed, 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, analyzed and provided to European and national standardisationorganisations in Europe.

Keywords:

quality, standardisation, sustainability, training, solid biofuel

Topic:

Biomass Policies, Markets and Sustainability

Subtopic:

Biomass strategies and policies

Event:

21st European Biomass Conference and Exhibition

Session:

5AV.3.12

Pages:

1905 - 1907

ISBN:

978-88-89407-53-0

Paper DOI:

10.5071/21stEUBCE2013-5AV.3.12

Price:

FREE