Bioenergy Europe has brought forward the “GoodChips” program, which is being offered as the first international certification scheme for wood chips as it pertains to their use as a solid biofuel.
Most wood pellet producers work with additional wood-based products, so I thought it would be of interest to share a new development in the global wood chip market. Bioenergy Europe has brought forward the “GoodChips” program, which is being offered as the first international certification scheme for wood chips as it pertains to their use as a solid biofuel. The certification scheme is intended to cover the whole supply chain from production to delivery. It is designed to facilitate trade to make it more transparent, and to harmonize the quality of various grades of wood chips and hog fuels. I will provide a summary in this column, but if this is of interest to you, then I recommend reviewing the overall program through the website, goodchips.eu.
Consistency in wood chip quality has historically been a big issue on a global scale. While wood chips have been produced and traded as solid biofuels for decades, the various heating and energy markets have developed without a proper quality framework, leading to inconsistency in what various producers and users—and even entire regions—define as a wood chip. With the publishing of ISO 17225-4 (fuel specifications for graded wood chips) in 2014, global commerce has a starting point for standardizing wood chip quality. Within ISO 17225-4, wood chips are defined based on the material types used, as well as quality criteria such as particle size, fines content, moisture, ash, etc.