Paper details

Title:

Implementing the Sustainability Criteria in EU Biofuels Policy: Regulating International Biofuels Feedstock Production and Supply Chains

Author(s):

Kay, A., Ackrill, R.

Document(s):

Abstract:

Governments globallyare seeking to limit GHG emissions and emissions growth without affecting economic growth adversely. A central part of these efforts involvespromoting liquid biofuels for transport, derived principally from feedstocks produced by the primary sector. Importer governments are also developing sustainability criteria,which seek to ensure the production of these feedstockshas a positive environmental impact compared with the fossil fuels being replaced. Such measures represent an unprecedented challenge to the policy co-ordination capacity of modern states, asthey must draw together public, private and civil society actors on a global scale, to ensure biofuels, sold as sustainable, have been derived from biofuel feedstocks produced and sold as sustainable in (often distant) third countries. This projectfocuses on EU biofuels sustainability criteria; and explores the interaction of formal EU legislation with third-country policy processes, third-country private sector actors and private market regulation in transnational civil society fora such ascommodity Roundtables.The EU is developing hybrid, second­generation policy instruments to empower civil society institutions to play a more effective role in regulating business behaviour. This project highlights the necessary role of civic regulation in implementing EU biofuels policy, but it questions the extent to which the EU can co-opt, shape or create such civic regulations, alongside private business interests, to achieve its own policy ends.

Keywords:

certification issues, policies, supply chain, sustainability criteria, trade, biofuels

Topic:

Biomass Policies, Markets and Sustainability

Subtopic:

Sustainability assessment and criteria

Event:

19th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition

Session:

VP5.2.7

Pages:

2576 - 2580

ISBN-13:

978-88-89407-55-4

ISBN-10:

88-89407-55-7

Paper DOI:

10.5071/19thEUBCE2011-VP5.2.7

Price:

FREE