BDO Zone Rating and Certification

Counties, municipalities, cities, towns, and industrial parks that want to attract new markets that use local abundant biomass and create energy jobs should consider a BDO Zone™ Rating.

Regions that achieve ‘AAA’, ‘AA’, ‘A, or ‘BBB’ ratings are awarded a BDO Zone™ Rating, which marks them as one of the optimal areas in the country for biobased development. Regions have the right to use the BDO Zone™ Rating in economic development activities.

The BDO Zone™ Rating process consists of two phases: Analysis and Promotion.

The Rating Analysis Phase typically takes four to sixteen weeks, but it may vary based on the level of complexity. It includes risk analysis of up to 100 biomass supply chain and infrastructure risk indicators in the zone based on national ASTM and CSA standards. The rating score is assigned, issued, and published as part of this phase.

The Rating Analysis work is followed by a 12-24 month Rating Promotion Phase to support and promote the rating worldwide to thousands of project developers, investors, and industry stakeholders and drive new bio-based development to the issuer.

BDO Zone™ Rated regions are closely examined and scored using the most rigorous standardized framework devised to date for accurately rating feedstock risk for investors and capital markets.

The industry Biomass Supply Chain Risk (BSCR) Standards are a recognized, validated, standardized, and transparent protocol for evaluating feedstock risk. This framework was developed by the USDOE’s Idaho National Lab (INL), Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) and Ecostrat, together with a stakeholder group of several hundred major bioeconomy investors, plant operators, feedstock and equipment suppliers, government and academia, with funding from the US Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), the Canadian federal government (NRCan/CFS) and the Standards Council of Canada (SCC).

In 2021, the CSA used the BSCR standard as the seed document to produce a National Standard of Canada (CSA W209:21). Harmonization as a U.S. ASTM standard is slated for 2025.

Certification and issue of BDO Zone™ Ratings are governed by a Review Committee (RC) made up of 8-10 technical professionals as voting and non-voting members who provide technical feedback on the rating.

Issue of BDO Zone™ Ratings requires approval from two-thirds of the RC.

A BDO Zone™ Rating is a trusted award that helps developers and investors recognize regions that are “bio-manufacturing ready”.

New project deal-flow is driven to BDO Zone™ Rated Regions recipients by worldwide exposure to developers and capital markets:

BDO Zone™ CONNECT Webinars provide Zones with access to >6 million online bioeconomy sector readers, 140,000 streaming and 45,000 daily newsletter subscriptions.

The BDO Zone™ Investment Coalition is a group of leading capital markets^¹ including Citibank and Goldman Sachs with a collective goal of investing in BDO Zone™ Rated Regions to build new biofuel, renewable chemical, and biogas manufacturing plants. On April 22, 2021, the coalition announced $1 Billion for deployment into bio-based investment in BDO Zone™ Rated Regions.

See all members of the BDO Zone™ Investment Coalition.