Activities

UNEP is working in partnership with governments, the private sector and NGOs on a number of activities to help bioenergy reach its sustainable potential:

Assure environmental and social sustainability

To ensure that bioenergy can achieve its potential benefits, sustainability of the entire life-cycle, i.e. production, conversion and use of bioenergy needs to be assured. In close cooperation with partners in governments, industry and civil society, UNEP is defining a sustainability standard that should help reduce the risks while the bioenergy market continues to develop.

• Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels
  The RSB is a process brings together a large variety of stakeholders to develop principles and criteria for sustainable production of biofuels
  
  
• Due Diligence Guidelines
  The Due Diligence Guidelines are a practical tool for financiers and investors to check and mitigate their risk of investments in the renewable energy sector
  
  
• Collaboration with Daimler, WWF, and the Ministry of Agriculture of Baden Wuertemberg
  Result of this cooperation is a background document that reviews existing certification systems linked to biomass certification, compiles initiatives by the international community and country policies on biofuels, and gives an indication on requirements of different crops
  
  
• Implementation of Sustainability Certification
  A series of activities addressing issues related to practical implementation of biofuel certification to ensure they deliver on their promise as a sustainability tool
  

Support Bioenergy planning - from assessments to tools for decision makers

At the cross roads of different policy areas, bioenergy requires trade offs and coordination amongst energy,
agriculture, transport, environment, and trade policies. To enable informed decisions, UNEP is working to improve the analytical basis, develop tools and engage in building capacity.

• GEF Targeted Research Project
  The Global Environment Facility (GEF) Targeted Research Project: Assessments and Guidelines for Sustainable Liquid Biofuel Production in Developing Countries, aims to identify and assess sustainable systems for the production of liquid biofuels both for transport and stationary applications

• GBEP
  GBEP is an initiative by the G8 +5 (Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa) taken at the 2005 Gleneagles Summit, to support wider, cost effective, biomass and biofuels deployment, particularly in developing countries
  
  
• Resource Panel
  The Resource Panel provides independent scientific assessment of the environmental impacts due to the use of resources over the full life cycle, and advise governments and organisations on ways to reduce these impacts in a number of areas, including biofuels
  
  
• Mapping
  Mapping is an important tool to help solid bioenergy planning by identifying areas that should be exempt from bioenergy development because of their high conservation value in terms of biodiversity or in terms of CO2 storage capacity ,and areas that would be suitable for bioenergy development
  
  
• Joint International Workshop: Spotlight on Bioenergy and Water (July 5th – 6th, 2010 in Paris)
  In a world already facing water stress, largely due to over 70% of freshwater being consumed by the agricultural sector, water has been identified as a potentially limiting factor for bioenergy development
  

Business Models / Creative financing for small farmers and of small-scale production for local use

In order to ensure that the potential development benefits of bioenergy production materialize, UNEP supports the involvement of small farmers in larger projects (participatory business models, such as contract farming or equity) and the development of small-scale projects (local production for local use).

• AREED II
  UNEP's Rural Energy Enterprise Development Programme is an initiative offering enterprise development services and start-up financing to 'clean energy' enterprises. In a second phase of the activities in Africa (AREED), attention will be given to projects involving biofuels
  
  
• The COMPETE/ENDA conference on bioenergy financing in Africa
  In October 2009, together with the COMPETE network and ENDA Environmental Development Action in the Third World, UNEP co-organized a conference that brought together investors, financiers, donors, project developers, entrepreneurs, NGOs and international organizations to share experiences and examples of projects that illustrate best practices for bioenergy financing in Africa
  
  
• Roundtable on Bioenergy Enterprise
  The Roundtable consists of a network of centers of excellence that will pull together, analyse and develop materials that will ultimately help small farmers to engage in Bioenergy enterprise development (plant and technological requirements, challenges in the production and conversion phases and ways to address them; business models and ways to help smallholders to get organised, including taking into account environmental and social co-benefits into classical cost-benefit analyses; barriers to Bioenergy enterprise development and ways to overcome them (financial, agronomical and technological, and political)
  
  
• Local Biofuel Production for Use in Telecommunication Applications
  Feasibility Study with Diligent and Ericsson to explore options how demand for new services that require energy to operate could spur the Bioenergy market
  

Assure environmental and social sustainability

Support Bioenergy planning - from assessments to tools for decision makers

Business Models / Creative financing for small farmers and of small-scale production for local use