Biofuel sustainability and certification schemes.

Biofuels represent nowadays the most used renewable energy source to replace fossil fuels. Their rapid expansion has been encouraged by international and European policies in order to achieve the objectives of security and independence of energy supply, to mitigate climate change and to diversify agricultural income. The European Directive 28/2009 (RED) has introduced a range of sustainability criteria that biofuels must meet to achieve the objective of 10% of total fuel consumption by 2020. To verify these criteria, the Directive introduces the possibility for economic operators to use voluntary certification schemes or other national or international initiatives. The paper aims, therefore, to produce an analysis of the state of the art of certification schemes approved by the European Union and internationally, comparing them and highlighting their individual characteristics. This analysis may be useful to highlight potential problems and strategies to improve sustainability by integrating the existing schemes with additional criteria not considered yet.