University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

- Cramer Commission56,
- Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO)57,
- Round table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)58,
- Basel criteria (for responsible soy production)59,
- Utz Codes of Conduct60,
- Eurep or Global Good Agricultural Practices (EurepGAP – GlobalGAP)61,
- International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM)62,
- Sustainable Agricultural Network / Rainforest Alliance (SAN/RA)63,
- Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)64,
- Pan-European Forest Council (PEFC)65,
- American Tree Farm System (ATFS)66,
- Sustainable Forestry Initiative Standard (SFIS)67,
- EUropean Green Electricity Network (Eugene)68,
- Green Gold Label program (GGL)69,
- Öko-Institut70.
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These initiatives define principles, criteria and, sometimes, indicators to assess the
sustainability of agricultural biomass and/or bioenergy. For example, a bioenergy
route is sustainable if it respects a list of environmental, social and economical
criteria. These criteria are not taken into account in bioenergy cost and price. They
can thus be considered as externalities. Sustainability criteria respect is a way of
internalizing externalities.
Table 1 briefly describes how each initiative covers biomass/bioenergy sustainability
criteria.
56 Netherlands project group “Sustainable Production of Biomass” with representatives of private companies (for
example, SenterNovem), social organizations, financial institutions and government (SenterNovem 2005;
Cramer et al. 2006)
57 United Kingdom Department of Transport commissioned two independent consultants on carbon and
sustainability reporting. Consultants met oil and biofuel industries, NGOs and other stakeholders’
representatives (Tipper et al. 2006; Dehue et al. 2007).
58 A commercial initiative to promote sustainability criteria for imported palm oil (Denruyter 2007; WWF
Germany 2007)
59 Technical draft for the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS), a parallel initiative to RSPO (Proforest 2004;
RTRS 2006; Cert ID 2006)
60 Relevant for coffee plantings (Utz Certified 2007)
61 Retailers and producers define integrated farm assurance standards for combinable crops. In other words, they
define minimum requirements to allow European market entry of fresh fruits and vegetables, flowers and
ornamentals, green coffee, aquaculture… (GLOBALG.A.P.(EUREPGAP) 2007; ACCS 2007) In 2007,
EurepGAP became GlobalGAP, and revised its world wide standards (Dehue et al. 2007). We describe here
EurepGap criteria.
62 IFOAM 2002. Meta-standard which gives accreditation to other standards for different crops (Dehue et al.
2007)
63 Independent and non-profit conservation groups define sustainability criteria for crops as bananas, coffee,
cocoa…(Smeets et al. 2006; SAN/RA 2008)
64 Forest Stewardship Council 2002; Stupak 2007
65 PEFC 1998; Stupak 2007
66 Fritsche et al. 2006
67 Fritsche et al. 2006
68 A European label for green energy from biomass (Van Dam et al. 2006; Fritsche et al. 2006)
69 Van Dam et al. 2006; Fritsche et al. 2006
70 Recommendations based on various studies on sustainability criteria and certification initiatives (Fritsche et al.
2006)