GPEB news roundup: work on sustainability criteria and indicators fast-tracked


The Global Bioenergy Partnership (GBEP) is focusing in coming months on reaching consensus on its sustainability criteria and indicators, with a view to starting the process of piloting them next year.

The GBEP Task Force on Sustainability, now chaired by Sweden, has achieved a significant level of provisional agreement on the sustainability indicators. These are designed to enable governments to build their capacity to monitor, interpret and respond to the environmental, social and economic impacts of their bioenergy production and use.

Further discussion is needed, for example, on food security, land rights and allocation, and the contextual information that will be provided to support the use of GBEP criteria and indicators. But, while those discussions proceed, the Task Force is now refining the methodology sheets for the provisionally agreed indicators and will soon begin to discuss the final GBEP report on this issue.

With the work of the Task Force on GHG Methodologies concluded, GBEP is postponing until March 2011 discussion of a new focus area regarding capacity building and technology co-operation so that all efforts can be concentrated on achieving agreement on the sustainability indicators and criteria.

In the meantime, GBEP has agreed on the proposal to extend the Italian Chairmanship and the Brazilian Co-Chairmanship for another year (2011). The GBEP Steering Committee held in Rome last month also welcomed Colombia, Mauritania and the European Commission as Partners.

GBEP is also continuing with its awareness-raising activities and promoting its work to scale up renewable energy through events such as the one held at the Delhi International Renewable Energy Conference 2010 in India in late October. The side event, organised by the GBEP Secretariat and the Italian Environment Ministry, saw the participation of Roberto Menia, Under-Secretary of the Italian Environment Ministry, N. P. Singh from India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, Director of the Brazilian Ministry of External Relations and GBEP Co-Chair, Rick Duke, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate Policy at the US Department of Energy, and Mark Radka, Chief of the Energy Branch, Division of Technology, Industry and Economics at the United Nations Environment Programme.

 

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