Policies & strategies
It is most likely that the importance of biomass and bioenergy carriers imported to the EU will increase in the future. EU Member States should strive for a balanced approach between promoting the use of domestic biomass, while also keeping markets open for sustainable imports of biomass.
Thus, solid long term strategies on how to include sustainable biomass imports in European bioenergy markets are defined. In that sense the BioTrade2020plus project will be complementary to other projects like BiomassPolicies and S2BIOM which focus on the role of domestic biomass.
BioTrade2020plus Policy Reports for download
- Database of relevant policies (EU, MS, outside EU) impacting biomass imports to the EU (D5.1) (download)
- Strategies for bioenergy in potential supply regions and regulatory SWOT analysis as trade partner to the EU – Draft document for discussion (D5.2) (download)
- Opportunities, risks and barriers of international biomass trade, key principles for sustainable trade and potential policy frameworks around imports (D5.3) (download)
- Advisory document on long-term strategies to include sustainable biomass imports in European bioenergy markets (D5.4) (download)
- Online Survey: Policy options for sustainable biomass trade (download)
Online Survey on BioTrade SWOT Analysis
We would like to invite you to share your opinion on the strengths and weaknesses of certain regions in the world as trade partner for biomass with the EU.
Within the European project BioTrade2020plus we aim to provide guidelines for the development of a European Bioenergy Trade Strategy for 2020 and beyond. The focus is on lignocellulosic biomass (woody resources, agricultural residues and cellulosic crops), with case studies in specific sourcing regions. Last year we distributed a survey on opportunities, risks and barriers of international trade, key principles of sustainable trade, and potential policy options to deal with risks and barriers. The results of this survey can be found on the BioTrade2020+ website.
The attractiveness of a certain country/region as trade partner for the EU not only relates to the availability of biomass, but also to the political stability and local governance, the investment climate and potential projections to use the available biomass for domestic applications (energy and other). Also sustainability governance for forestry or agriculture are considered as this will be an important requirement from EU side for potentially imported biomass.
This survey contains 6 to 10 statements on (regulatory) strengths or weaknesses for different potential sourcing regions that could export biomass to the EU: United States, Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Kenya and Ukraine. We would like to exchange and validate these statements with different stakeholders who have hands-on experience in these regions.
Please choose the region(s) that you are most familiar with to check if you agree or disagree with these statements. This will only take around five minutes per sourcing region. We kindly request you to complete the survey before 30 June 2016. The responses will be used as input for a final advisory document to the European Commission on international trade of biomass. Your responses will be treated as confidential.
Online survey: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/2807987/67e19fea8229
Download report: "Strategies for bioenergy in potential supply regions and regulatory SWOT analysis as trade partner to the EU – Draft document for discussion"
Biotrade2020+ survey on international biomass trade for energy
In April 2015 BioTrade2020+ launched an online survey on international biomass trade for energy. The survey’s intention was to gather stakeholder's opinions in terms of opportunities, risks and barriers of international trade, key principles of sustainable trade, and potential policy options to deal with risks and barriers. 127 people from 35 different countries participated in the survey. The report shows an overview of the analysis of the survey results. Acces to the (closed) survey is here: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1979784/Biotrade2020plus
The results of the survey can be downloaded here.
