The Sustainable Biomass Program (SBP) is a leading global biomass certification scheme offering assurances to end users (especially nations in the EU and Asia) that biomass (especially wood pellets for energy) is “sourced both legally and sustainably.” But a recent report by a group of environmental NGOs alleges SBP is approving biomass fuel projects linked to forest destruction.

While SBP-certified biomass meets minimum legal requirements, it often falls short of genuine sustainability, according to the July 2025 report written by Canada-based forest certification and governance expert Richard Robertson. The analysis was commissioned by five nonprofits: Solutions for Our Climate (SFOC), the Global Environmental Forum (GEF), Mighty Earth, Biofuelwatch, and the Environmental Paper Network (EPN).

The booming biomass-for-energy industry touts wood pellets and chips as a winning climate solution. But the report notes that this assertion is based on a faulty carbon accounting loophole that counts significant smokestack emissions from biomass as zero. Numerous studies have shown that biomass burning is more carbon-intensive than coal per unit of energy produced.

Billions of dollars in green energy subsidies have been paid out by European and Asian nations to the biomass industry, spurring demand for woody biomass and putting pressure on carbon-rich forests in the United States, Canada, Vietnam, South Korea, Europe, Indonesia and elsewhere.

Many end-user nations have put their trust in SBP for sustainability certification. But years of criticism from forest advocates and climate experts have led major importers, such as the U.K. and Japan, to tighten sustainability requirements for subsidized biomass fuel. Despite these actions, critics say that certification schemes like those used by SBP still allow the bioenergy industry and governments to continue supporting biomass under a veneer of sustainability.

Blanket ‘sustainability’ label

Co-founded in 2013 by biomass producer and utility Drax and six other energy companies, SBP is a private program that provides sustainability certifications for biomass producers, traders and end users across 35 countries, including major biomass exporters such as the U.S., Canada and Vietnam.

More than 14 million metric tons of SBP-certified wood pellets were produced and/or sold in 2024. That’s nearly one-third of global wood pellet consumption, which totaled an estimated 45 million metric tons that year. More than 85% of wood pellets burned in Europe carry SBP certification, including nearly 100% of wood burned at the U.K.’s Drax Power Station, the world’s largest biomass power plant.

The NGO report alleges that not all SBP-certified biomass has been harvested sustainability, and points out that certification methodologies are highly variable and open to potential problems: According to the report’s review of SBP’s standards, SBP certifies pellet mills and biomass traders without field audits or direct engagement with logging companies. Instead, it relies on other forest certification schemes such as that of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), desk-based risk assessments, and broad screening tools. It places a blanket sustainability label on feedstock from sources with varying levels of forest certification — from “well-managed forests” to “controlled” wood that only guarantees legal harvest, not sustainability, according to the report’s analysis.

SBP offers two levels of certification: “SBP-compliant,” which refers to biomass SBP finds to be in compliance with its own standards and is certified as “sustainable,” and “SBP-controlled,” which indicates that the biomass in question was produced to conform with another forest certification scheme’s “controlled” claim — certifying only legality, not sustainability.

More than 90% of SBP-certified biomass was categorized as SBP-compliant, promising sustainability, in 2024.

The report is also critical of SBP’s practice of certifying a broad range of “forest residue” feedstock, including wood of low commercial value but high ecological importance, some of which is sourced from primary forests. SBP’s assessment of “secondary feedstocks,” such as sawmill residue, similarly lacks rigor, says the report, as such feedstock may not originate from sustainably managed forests.

Importantly, SBP zeroes out biomass carbon smokestack emissions, assuming that those emissions will be offset by forest regrowth — a many-decades-long timeline incompatible with the urgent need to drastically reduce emissions in the short term to prevent disastrous climate change.

“Our analysis shows that SBP certification fails even its own low bar for sustainability,” report author Robertson said in a press release.

SBP published a response to the report, acknowledging the concerns raised and declaring itself open to dialogue. At the same time, the organization emphasized that its standards are designed to assess “the sustainability and legality of biomass sourcing at the level of the Biomass Producer, not at the forest management unit level” and that it does not “make overarching climate impact claims.”

The NGOs, in a joint response published Aug. 2, questioned how SBP can assure sustainability without assessing forest management. “This contradiction sows confusion for governments and the public who rely on SBP for credible assurances,” they wrote.

Prompting ‘false confidence among policymakers’

Many governments, including those of leading biomass-importing nations, do indeed rely on SBP sustainability certification, and the report charges that the organization’s sweeping certifications create “false confidence among policymakers.”

One example offered by Sayoko Iinuma of the nonprofit GEF, which co-commissioned the report, is Japan, which experts anticipate will burn 14 million metric tons of biomass annually by 2030 and which officially recognized SBP as a qualifying certification for biomass subsidies in 2023. Although Japan announced in 2024 that it will no longer subsidize new biomass facilities, it has yet to commit to phasing out existing subsidies (in contrast to South Korea).

“The Japanese government’s fuel standards for biomass power generation recognize SBP as proof of sustainability, allowing power plants that burn these wood pellets to receive public subsidies,” Iinuma said in the joint press release from the nonprofits. “Despite clear evidence that biomass energy increases greenhouse gas emissions and degrades forest biodiversity, SBP merely paints it as ‘sustainable.’”

In a statement to Mongabay, Robertson said SBP risks setting a dangerous precedent by normalizing a certification structure that relies on paper audits, weak definitions of woody residues, and the absence of binding forest protection requirements. “South Korea’s Ministry of Environment has cited SBP as a model in designing its national biomass sustainability framework,” he noted.

A comment to Mongabay received from SBP’s communication’s team and attributed to SBP CEO Carsten Huljus emphasized that “organisations seeking subsidies are responsible for demonstrating compliance with regulatory sustainability criteria. SBP provides a robust framework to support that process, but it is ultimately up to governments and regulators to determine how certification schemes are applied within their subsidy mechanisms.”

It continued, “A number of national governments in key biomass end-markets, and the EU, recognize SBP as compliant with the biomass sustainability criteria within their respective regulatory and legislative frameworks. That recognition has come after in-depth scrutiny by those governments/institutions of our standards, processes and procedures, benchmarking them against their own requirements.”

SBP expanding in Asia

Although most SBP-certified biomass is currently produced and consumed in Europe and North America, Asia is becoming a key strategic focus for the organization. SBP’s 2024 annual review states, “Geographically, our market development efforts focused heavily on south east Asia, namely, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam. Certification uptake in south east Asia doubled in 2024 compared to the year before, alongside a quadrupling of the biomass volumes traded from the region.”

Robertson said he’s worried by this trend. His report focused mostly on wood pellet production in Canada as a case study, but he noted in the document’s conclusion that his findings “raise deeper concerns about SBP’s performance in jurisdictions with weaker legal and institutional safeguards,” including biomass exporters in Asia such as Vietnam and Indonesia.

“The SBP scheme fails to protect even the relatively well-governed forests of Canada. When applied to tropical countries with weaker oversight and higher biodiversity, the risks multiply. It provides a façade of sustainability where none exists,” Robertson told Mongabay.

Indeed, biomass production in Southeast Asia has been plagued by claims against its sustainability, including cases involving SBP. In Indonesia, tropical rainforest was cleared for a monoculture biomass plantation, with the SBP-certified Japanese company Hanwa among those trading the wood pellets produced. In Malaysia, two SBP-certified pellet suppliers were linked with rainforest clearance and with rubber plantations, drivers of deforestation, according to a June 2025 complaint filed by the nonprofits Biofuelwatch and Comité Schone Lucht to the Dutch Emissions Authority.

“SBP’s expansion into Asia sends a dangerous signal — one that greenwashes forest destruction while paving the way for subsidy-driven deforestation,” Hansae Song, international forests lead at SFOC, said in a statement to Mongabay. “We urge governments, utilities, and investors in Asia and beyond to reconsider their reliance on SBP certification and demand stronger safeguards that truly protect forest carbon and biodiversity.”

Banner image: Drax is the largest consumer of wood pellets for energy in the U.K. It also operates large wood pellet mills in the U.S. and Canada. Here, truckers carry whole trees to the Drax mill in Smithers, British Columbia, Canada, to be chipped and pressed into wood pellets for export to Asia. The new NGO report critical of SBP certification practices focused on biomass case studies from Canadian forests. Image courtesy of Stand.Earth.

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