Mansoor, Maha; Stupak, Inge; Smith, Tat --- "Private regulation in the bioenergy sector" [2016] ELECD 735; in Le Bouthillier, Yves; Cowie, Annette; Martin, Paul; McLeod-Kilmurray, Heather (eds), "The Law and Policy of Biofuels" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016) 406

Book Title: The Law and Policy of Biofuels

Editor(s): Le Bouthillier, Yves; Cowie, Annette; Martin, Paul; McLeod-Kilmurray, Heather

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781782544548

Section: Chapter 17

Section Title: Private regulation in the bioenergy sector

Author(s): Mansoor, Maha; Stupak, Inge; Smith, Tat

Number of pages: 33

Abstract/Description:

Sustainability is a cornerstone for the deployment of bioenergy. It is critical to understand how governments, private bioenergy businesses and societal organizations initiate and engage with mechanisms to achieve sustainability for both the production and the use of bioenergy. Private regulation has become an important tool for this initiation and engagement and there is extensive literature available that analyses the benefits and challenges of using private regulation as compared with public regulation. In this chapter, we present a framework for addressing private regulation in the bioenergy sector (section 17.3) and explain how private governance for bioenergy emerged and how it came to have such an important role (section 17.4). Furthermore, we analyse the benefits and challenges of private forms of sustainability governance in the bioenergy sector from both an industry-wide level (macro scale) and the individual firm (micro scale) perspective, including the interaction between these two levels (section 17.5). In order to do this, we conducted literature reviews and convened interviews with directors in businesses and business associations along a major supply chain for solid bioenergy. The organizations we approached included trade associations of solid biofuel producers, individual solid biofuel producing businesses and energy utilities for production of heat and power. Based on this work, we outline three broad impacts of private regulation for the solid bioenergy industry and individual businesses in this supply chain.