SBP Consultation on the Final Draft Regional Risk Assessment for the Province of Québec, Canada

SBP has today opened a public consultation on the Final Draft Regional Risk Assessment (RRA) for the Province of Québec, Canada. Interested parties are invited to provide written comments on the draft.

The Final Draft RRA for the Province of Québec, Canada has been prepared at the request of the Québec Forest Industry Council (QFIC) and the Québec Wood Export Bureau (QWEB), which together provided financial support for developing the RRA in accordance with SBP RRA Procedure v1.0.

The Final Draft RRA may be viewed at: https://sbp-cert.org/documents/consultation-documents/live-consultations/risk-quebec/. Interested parties are invited to provide written comments to info@sbp-cert.org by the close of business on Thursday, 7 May 2020.

Regional Risk Assessments are a key part of SBP’s focus on identifying and mitigating risks associated with sourcing feedstock for biomass wood pellet and woodchip production. The SBP certification system is designed to provide assurance that all feedstock is sourced legally and sustainably.

Feedstock certified at the forest level through FSC® or PEFC schemes and feedstock from recycled sources is automatically SBP-compliant. All other feedstock must be evaluated using a risk-based approach.

Typically, the Biomass Producer – a pellet or woodchip mill – is responsible for carrying out the risk assessment and putting in place mitigation measures to manage any specified risks such that they can be considered as controlled and hence low risk. It is the role of an independent, third-party accredited Certification Body to determine, amongst other things, that the feedstock evaluation has been correctly undertaken.

The purpose of a Regional Risk Assessment is to evaluate an entire geographic region and determine the risks associated with sourcing feedstock for biomass wood pellet or woodchip production from that region. Thus, the need for individual Biomass Producers to conduct risk assessments is avoided. Further, Regional Risk Assessments are particularly valuable where statutory protection for forested land is limited.

SBP Annual Review 2019 Published

The Sustainable Biomass Program (SBP) has today published its 2019 annual review. The review is available at www.sbp-cert.org/documents/annual-reviews.

Carsten Huljus, SBP Chief Executive Officer, commented: “I am pleased to report that 2019 was another successful year for SBP. We have seen continued growth in the number of our certificate holders, furthered our geographic reach and, above all, put into practice our new governance arrangements.

“We have also reviewed our strategy, developed a three-year work plan to deliver that strategy, and made solid progress on aligning our operations with best practice, as demonstrated by leading sustainability standards. All of which puts us in good shape to make SBP future-fit and realise our ambition to position SBP as the certification system of choice for biomass.

“Looking ahead, we have some important and significant pieces of work to undertake. The preparations for our standards development process are well advanced and the launch is scheduled for Wednesday, 20 May. The programme of work will call on all stakeholders for their views, ideas and experience to ensure that our standards are credible and robust.

“Essential to our credibility and reputation is the impact we, as a certification system, are having in the marketplace. We plan to develop a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system to demonstrate our impact. And in our quest to introduce best practice across all our operations we will be embarking on a digitalisation project to enable a more efficient audit process and smarter data collection.

“Through our credible and robust certification system, assuring responsible practice throughout the biomass supply chain, SBP is the promise of good biomass and is an integral part of the solution for tackling climate change.”