ISCC General Assembly: Positive summary after one year of certification of biomass
Brussels, February 8th 2011: ISCC (International Sustainability and Carbon Certification), the first international certification system to prove sustainability and greenhouse gas savings for all kinds of biomass, gave a positive summary after one year of operation.
Norbert Schmitz, Managing Director of ISCC explained at the General assembly in Brussels in front of 140 guests from industry, politics and administration: “We started operations at the beginning of 2010 and have since issued 171 certificates. More than 250 trained auditors are on the scout for ISCC to check if plantations, farms, oilmills and refineries worldwide comply with our sustainability criteria. That’s an important contribution to climate protection and biodiversity.”
80 percent of the issued certificates were assigned in the European Union. The first palm oil plantations and oil mills in Indonesia and Malaysia have obtained an ISCC certificate as well as the first ethanol power plants in the USA. In Latin America the first audits of soy and ethanol are in preparation.
ISCC does not only implement the legal requirements for biofuels and biomass for electricity production. “If we want to control negative impacts like indirect land use changes, we have to expand the sustainability requirements to all other applications. Less than one-tenth of the worldwide palm oil production for example is used in the bioenergy sector. The biggest part is used in the food and non-food-sector, without any minimum requirements “, explained Norbert Schmitz.
In order to turn the European Renewable Energy Directive into national law, germany has adopted two ordinances, which have come into force as of January 1st 2011. “ISCC registrations have almost doubled within the last two months” said Schmitz. “Many companies acknowledge the importance of a sustainable production.” 44 percent of the European bioethanol capacity as well as 23 percent of the biodiesel capacity are already ISCC certified. “These capacities now have to receive sustainable biomass to be able to deliver sustainable biofuels”, explained Schmitz.
The ISCC Association elected Ian Pinner from ADM International as a new board member and Prof. Gernot Klepper, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, as the new chair of the board.
Furthermore the new integrity program was presented to the members of the ISCC Association at the General Assembly. It allows for an independent control of certification bodies and the certification process by third party auditors. Any divergences from the certification standard can lead to a number of penalties, up to the exclusion of a certification body or the loss of a certificate, depending on the seriousness of the failure.