According to the European Commission the sustainability of biofuels needs to be checked by Member States or through voluntary schemes. The Commission recognised seven such voluntary schemes within the highest sustainability standards in the world. With these schemes, biofuels can represent an environmentally-friendly replacement of fossil fuels.

The EU has the objective of achieving a minimum share of 10% renewable energy in transport by 2020. Where biofuels are used to achieve this target, these must meet a set of sustainability requirements approved in June 2010. Companies can choose whether to demonstrate compliance with these sustainability requirements through national systems or by joining a voluntary scheme which is recognised by the Commission. In this case, the Commission approved the following schemes:

SCC (German -government financed- scheme covering all types of biofuels), Bonsucro EU (Roundtable initiative for sugarcane based biofuels, focus on Brazil), RTRS EU RED (Roundtable initiative for soy based biofuels, focus on Argentina and Brazil), RSB EU RED (Roundtable initiative covering all types of biofuels), 2BSvs (French industry scheme covering all types of biofuels), RSBA (Industry scheme for Abengoa covering their supply chain) and Greenergy (Industry scheme for Greenergy covering sugar cane ethanol from Brazil).

The assessment checks whether a scheme is or not against the sustainability requirements and is satisfied that it adequately covers the sustainability requirements of the Renewable Energy Directive. Then, it will give its recognition for five years. If the rules of the voluntary scheme have been met, the scheme can issue a certificate for that product.

Biofuels used in the EU, whether locally produced or imported, have to comply with sustainability criteria in order to receive government support or count towards mandatory national renewable energy targets. These criteria aim at preventing the conversion of areas of high biodiversity and high carbon stock for the production of raw materials for biofuels. In practice this means that biofuels made of crops that have been grown on land that used to be rainforest or natural grassland with a unique ecosystem cannot be considered as sustainable. In addition, the greenhouse gas emissions over the whole production chain need to be at least 35% lower compared to fossil fuels.