The BioGrace-II project ran from 2012 to 2015 and was financed by the Intelligent Energy Europe programme.

The overall objective of the project was a European harmonisation of GHG emission calculations for bio-energy (electricity, heating, cooling and biofuels). The three specific objectives of the project were to:

1. Develop & disseminate a GHG Excel calculation tool for electricity and heat from biomass
2. Convince policy makers from 6 EU member states to decide to harmonise GHG calculations
3. Cause that companies (including verifiers and owners of voluntary sustainability schemes) give feedback on the Excel tool and use it.

The main activities and results achieved in the BioGrace-II project were:

1. Policy makers were involved through bilateral meetings and in two policy maker workshops, with as a concrete result that (a) harmonisation of GHG emissions was discussed with policy makers from 13 member states and (b) Denmark and The Netherlands have decided to harmonise GHG calculations by both using the BioGrace-II GHG calculation tool when demonstrating that national sustainability criteria are to be met.
2. The project partners built and published three versions of a tool to calculate GHG emissions for electricity, heating and cooling from biomass, which consists of an Excel tool, a list of additional standard values, a methodological background document, calculation rules and a user manual. These outputs have been disseminated, until April 2015 more than 1000 stakeholders downloaded the tool from www.biograce.net.
3. Companies and other stakeholders have given feedback in 9 feedback sessions and 3 public workshops and verifiers and verifier trainers have been trained in verifier training sessions. More than 100 companies have commented on the key outputs of the BioGrace-II products. Also 57 verifier trainers from voluntary schemes and verifiers operating under those schemes have been trained in GHG calculations and have passed the information on to other verifiers. Overall, 435 stakeholders participated in workshops, trainings and feedback sessions.
4. The BioGrace-II activities and results were disseminated through a website www.biograce.net, a leaflet and a brochure, 8 newsletters and presentations at international conferences.

The project consortium’s conclusion is that the action succeeded in reaching its objectives A and C. Objective B was partly reached.

On separate pages you can find more information on the project background, on results that were expected, on the work programme and on project reports.