Alongside energy efficiency, electrification, and circularity, the bioeconomy can play a key role in the industrial transition and in fulfilling the EU’s climate goals. To ensure a competitive transition, boosting market demand for sustainable biomass-based products is becoming increasingly urgent. As the European Commission prepares the upcoming Biotech Act II and broader initiatives, Cefic is calling for an EU-wide sustainability framework for biomass used in products tied to market-pull measures.
Sustainability criteria for biomass could support future market-pull measures by safeguarding environmental integrity and ensuring that biomass-derived value chains deliver genuine, measurable, and verifiable GHG emissions benefits. This includes potential product-level content targets, mandating a pre-determined amount of content derived from biomass.
The importance of sustainability frameworks was also highlighted during Cefic’s recent event, Building the bioeconomy: setting targets to stay on target. Speakers and panellists stressed that while market-pull measures can help create demand for biomass-derived products, clear and workable sustainability criteria are essential to provide credibility, regulatory certainty and confidence for investment across the value chain.
While sustainability requirements already exist for biomass used in energy applications, no equivalent EU-wide framework exists today for biomass used in products. This creates uncertainty for companies investing in emerging biomass-derived value chains and risks fragmenting the Single Market.
To address this gap, Cefic recommends:
- Building on the Renewable Energy Directive’s existing sustainability criteria rather than creating a separate framework for biomass used in products.
- Recognising existing, credible certification schemes to ensure traceability and reduce administrative burden.
- Applying robust life-cycle greenhouse gas accounting methodologies to assess the climate benefits of biomass-derived products.
- Maintaining broad feedstock eligibility, provided sustainability requirements are met, to support innovation and investment.
A harmonised EU approach would provide regulatory certainty, avoid fragmentation across the Single Market and help scale innovative biomass-derived value chains.
As discussions on the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) and on the future Biotech Act II continue, establishing clear sustainability criteria for biomass can help create the conditions needed for investment, innovation and industrial deployment.