Biased Assessment Standards blocking UK's £220 Billion Bioeconomy Growth

Research exposes how regulatory frameworks systematically disadvantage sustainable materials, hampering Net Zero goals and advocates adoption of EN18027:2025...

Critical flaws in environmental assessment standards are systematically blocking the UK's transition to sustainable materials, according to new research published today by BB-REG-NET's Environmental Working Group.

The comprehensive study reveals that Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) standards – the gold standard for measuring environmental impact – contain built-in biases that favour fossil-based materials over bio-based alternatives, potentially undermining the UK's £220 billion bioeconomy and Net Zero commitments.

For British companies developing sustainable materials, this creates a challenging situation where innovative products designed to reduce environmental impact can appear worse than fossil-based alternatives purely due to assessment methodology, not actual environmental performance.

Richard Lock, Managing Director of Holiferm, said: "When we sent the same data set to four different LCA specialists, we got four different results. This underscores a critical lack of standardisation – one that risks undermining both innovation and environmental integrity by allowing sustainability claims to vary widely depending on methodology, rather than facts."

Dr Jen Vanderhoven, COO of the Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association (BBIA) and project lead for BB-REG-NET, added: "Immediate standards reform is critical to unlock the UK's bioeconomy potential and maintain international competitiveness. The current situation where identical products can appear drastically different environmentally depending on which assessment method is used is undermining investor confidence and preventing sustainable innovations from reaching their full market potential."

The research, "Standardised, but Unfair? Challenges in comparing bio-based and fossil-based products using Life Cycle Assessment," assessed fourteen international standards and found that existing frameworks systematically penalise materials designed for composting, biodegradation, and carbon sequestration – precisely the circular economy pathways that make bio-based materials environmentally superior by closing nutrient loops and reducing waste.

This regulatory bias has profound implications. Whilst government departments have invested £450 million in taxpayer funds and attracted £517 million in private investment into bioeconomy research over five years, the same regulatory system prevents these innovations from fairly competing in the market through skewed environmental assessments.

The study identifies three critical ways current standards disadvantage sustainable materials:

Biogenic carbon bias: Standards fail to properly distinguish between biogenic and fossil carbon in their assessments. Bio-based materials release CO₂ that was recently absorbed from the atmosphere during plant growth, creating a closed carbon loop. However, many standards treat these biogenic emissions identically to fossil fuel combustion, fundamentally misrepresenting the carbon neutrality of bio-based materials.
End-of-life discrimination: This emerges as the largest barrier to fair comparison. Materials specifically designed for composting and biodegradation – key circular economy pathways – are forced into assessment frameworks built for incineration and landfill. When standards assess a compostable material as if it were incinerated, they completely miss the intended environmental benefits of returning nutrients to soil and closing material loops.
Methodological inconsistency: Critical assessment parameters – such as time horizons for carbon accounting, system boundaries, and allocation methods – are left to practitioner discretion. This allows the same product data to produce environmental scores varying by over 100% depending on which methodological choices are made, rendering comparative assessments meaningless

The findings expose a critical weakness in the UK's environmental policy framework at a time when countries such as the United States and France are implementing more supportive policies for bio-based materials, creating stable markets and driving investment.

The research demonstrates this bias in clear terms. When comparing bio-based and fossil-based bottles using current ISO standards, the sustainable option's environmental score could vary by 103% purely due to methodological choices. However, using the newly published EN 18027:2025 standard – designed specifically for fair comparison – the same products yielded consistent, meaningful results.

With 56 of the UK's 606 government departments involved in bioeconomy regulation, often working with conflicting priorities, the lack of standardised assessment methods is creating regulatory chaos that favours incumbent fossil-based industries over innovative sustainable alternatives.

The study identifies EN 18027:2025 "Bio-based products - Life Cycle Assessment" as the solution, providing the first standard specifically designed to eliminate bias in comparing fossil and bio-based materials. However, widespread adoption across government procurement, regulatory approval, and industry standards is essential to unlock fair market competition.

Rachel Rothman, Professor of Sustainable Chemical Engineering at the University of Sheffield and one of the report’s authors, commented: "We recommend that policy makers and regulators require evaluation in line with the new EN 18027:2025 – the only standard that doesn't show bias when comparing fossil-based and bio-based materials."

Without urgent action to standardise assessment methods, the UK risks losing its competitive advantage in the global race for sustainable materials, undermining both its Net Zero commitments and economic opportunities in one of the fastest-growing sectors of the global economy.