Last year the Labour Government introduced a bill to require companies selling motor fuel to sell a small proportion of biofuel. The Green Party negotiated an amendment to ensure that the biofuel was from sustainable sources. The amendment ruled out fuels made from food crops, made by destroying biodiversity, or which did not significantly reduce carbon emissions. 

The incoming National Government repealed the legislation a few months after it was passed, preferring a subsidy for biofuels to a mandatory obligation, but also dropping the sustainability standards.

Jeanette's Member's Bill re-instates the legal framework for selling sustainable biofuels in New Zealand without violating WTO obligations. It does not distinguish between imported and locally produced biofuel, but requires both to meet the sustainability standard. The core provisions have already been through the Select Committee process and Parliament itself and remain unchanged in this Bill.

Here's a short video about the bill.

This is the Explanatory Note from the Bill: 

General policy statement

The purpose of this Bill is to ensure that biofuels which are supplied or sold in New Zealand from 1 May 2010 are sustainable biofuels. 

As petroleum based fuels become expensive and the production of many oil fields declines, and as the world seeks to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide in order to limit climate change, there is a need to find fuels which are renewable. Fuels such as ethanol, biodiesel and biogas (methane) can be made renewably from a range of plant and animal materials.  However, not all such fuels are environmentally benign. The cultivation and processing of some crops can use so much petroleum energy that total life cycle carbon emissions are higher than for petroleum fuels. This can be true of some production of ethanol from corn in the United States. Use of food grains to make biofuels may drive up world grain prices and deprive low income countries of the food they need for their people. Other biofuels are made at the expense of natural and even threatened ecosystems. An example is biodiesel from palm oil grown after clear felling of indigenous forests in south east Asia, thus destroying the habitat of many threatened species.

Biofuels can be made in New Zealand from crop and animal wastes, and as a by-product of food production. A standard for sustainable biofuels will prevent unfair competition from fuels which are not sustainable.