Field audit guidance

Guidance on interpretation of field audit results for RFA reporting

The RFA requires road transport fuel suppliers to report on whether the feedstocks used for biofuels under the RTFO complied with environmental and/or social standards. Compliance can be achieved in one of three ways:

1. Compliance with an existing certification scheme (e.g. ACCS, RSPO).
2. Compliance with a standard under development (e.g. RTRS, Basel, BSI) through a field audit against the standard's criteria.
3. Compliance with the RTFO Meta-Standard, through a field audit against the RTFO Meta-Standard. It is also possible to achieve the Qualifying Standard status at the environmental and/or social level where sufficient criteria are met.

Where the biofuel feedstock met an existing certification scheme no additional guidance on judging compliance in the field is required, as certification schemes maintain their own systems and procedures for judging field performance.  However, where a standard is used without an associated certification scheme, whether it is an existing qualifying standard or an interpretation of the meta-standard, the acceptable level of field performance is not currently defined in the C&S Technical Guidance.

Proforest, a company that has experience of conducting field audits against the RTFO Meta-Standard, have produced a short guidance note on interpretation of field audit results for RFA reporting. Before formally adopting this guidance from Proforest we invited comments, feedback and input on its content (up to 26 May 2009).

As this guidance is in line with the C&S Technical Guidance, and following positive responses from those stakeholders who commented on the document, the RFA accept it as a clarification note to our Technical Guidance. This note can be downloaded here.

Last Modified: 01 Jul 2009