SBP recognized as voluntary scheme under REDII

The Sustainable Biomass Program (SBP) is pleased to announce that on 26 September, the European Commission published the legal text of SBP’s recognition under the 2018 Renewable Energy Directive (REDII). The decision entered into force on the day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU), and so became effective as of 27 September.

REDII lays down requirements for, amongst other energy sources, biomass, to ensure that they can be counted towards the targets set in the directive only if they have been sustainably produced and save significant greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil fuels. SBP welcomes the commission’s endorsement of our standards’ reliability, transparency and independent auditing as being in line with the requirements of the directive.

As Europe’s largest independent certification scheme for woody biomass in large-scale industrial heat and power production, steps will now be taken to activate SBP’s systems to allow the scheme to be used to demonstrate compliance with REDII.

It should be noted that certificate holders must take action to comply with SBP’s specific REDII requirements in order to be REDII-compliant; recognition of our scheme does not mean biomass carrying an SBP claim is automatically REDII-compliant. SBP will host a webinar on 25 October 2022 for certificate holders and certification bodies to outline the REDII requirements and the actions to be taken to ensure compliance with REDII. Certificate holders and certification bodies are invited to register for the webinar here.

The link to the commission’s publication of the implementing decision can be found here, while the publication of the decision on the OJEU can be found here.