WWF report says some standards used to verify biofuels' sustainability in Europe fall short of requirements

A new report from WWF says that the standards used to assess biofuel sources fall well short of ensuring that Europe’s push towards increased biofuel use is not contributing to environmental destruction and social exploitation..

 

This study analyses and compares all standards and certification schemes for biofuels production that were approved to comply with the EU RED requirements. The study compared all of the EU-recognized schemes for certifying the sustainability of biofuels which were established in June, 2013.

 

Measuring these 13 standards and certification schemes against WWF’s sustainability criteria revealed each standard’s overall added sustainability value and identified areas for improvement.

 

The results of the study provide an overview and comparison of strengths and weaknesses for each standard from which the authors extracted recommendations for the scheme owners for improvement of their environmental and social performance. The study follows on with recommendations for EU RED legislation.

 

The study found that many of the analysed standards had "middle to low level performance".

 

The WWF study says that there is a lack of binding requirements in several areas, such as: for the preservation and improvement of ground, water and air quality, including the lack of criteria for the use of agrochemicals. Furthermore, social standards such as a ban on slave or child labour are also left out.

 

"Poisoned water and polluted soil is too high a price to pay for a full petrol tank ", said Imke Lübbeke, Senior Renewable Energy Policy Officer at WWF European Policy Office.

 

“While biofuels are one way to cut our dependence on fossil fuels, EU regulations remain too weak to ensure that the biofuels we use in Europe – whether imported or domestically produced - are environmentally and socially sustainable.”

 

The WWF CAT study found that while all schemes met the mandatory requirements, these were not enough to ensure sustainability. A number of the standards, specifically the ones created to comply with the EU RED, lacked or had inadequate criteria on issues such as waste management, compliance with labor laws and social legislation and paid insufficient attention to potential biofuel impacts on food security. Many did not require restoration of the native vegetation of riparian and other important areas.

 

Many also scored very low on key implementation measures such as transparency, auditor accreditation and the adequacy and strength of audit checks. 

 

The best-performing scheme out of the 13 looked into by the WWF analysis is the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) standard. The top performing standards tended to be multi-stakeholder biofuels certification schemes which actively involve businesses, civil society and policy makers in standard setting and implementation.

 

WWF says that the upcoming revision of the EU Renewable Energy Directive should now be used to close "unacceptable" gaps in the requirements for biofuels production. 

 

The WWF report does not specifically cover the monitoring requirements used in the UK under the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) which were based on a methodology developed by the LowCVP.