The Netherlands Programme Sustainable Biomass (NPSB) has been developed to gain experience in the production and certification of sustainable biomass to strengthen the framework for the production of sustainable biomass, based on practical experiences. The programme consisted of a subsidy fund and a supporting programme and has run from 2008 to end of 2013. The project portfolio consisted of projects from the Global Sustainable Biomass tenders (DBM projects) and from the Sustainable Biomass Import tenders (the DBI projects) and the relevant projects of the Daey Ouwens Fund. The program clustered the knowledge from the biomass project portfolio and has filled the knowledge gaps with supplementary research. Within the project portfolio, the DBM projects aimed to stimulate, support and facilitate the promotion of sustainability of the production, processing and import of biomass produced in developing countries, leading to the application of biomass for energy purposes. The DBI projects had a similar aim but focus on production of biomass for export to the Netherlands rather than local markets.The project portfolios have a wide variety in terms of content, approach and context. Some of the projects
actually biomass (attempt to) produce biomass; other projects have worked on the preconditions for sustainable production. A summarized overview of the projects is given in annex 1. The program and projects are together referred to as the NPSB projects or program in the report.
The overall objective of the report is to evaluate the overall lessons learned in the NPSB programme to promote the sustainable production of biomass for export and local use, and to give recommendations for future development. The report is divided into 6 main parts, each of them discussing the key objectives of the NBPS program: 1. Availability of biomass resources; 2. Technologies and innovations in conversion ; 3. Enhancing sustainable production of biomass for energy purposes; 4. Operationalization and use of the sustainability criteria; 5. Creating a business case; 6. Overall lessons learned.
Each topic is addressed in a separate chapter. Specific project findings, examples and conclusions (e.g. on Jatropha, financing, smallholder certification) are discussed in detail in the individual chapters. Each chapter ends with generic conclusions and recommendations. These are defined for different
stakeholder groups (NGOs, program developers, government and knowledge).The report ends with a final chapter VI in which generic, overall conclusions and lessons learned on how to develop sustainable biomass projects for import and local use are discussed.

By: NL Enterprise Agency

download this document:    6095 kb