by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Lux Research projects that the emergence of low-carbon fuels and vehicle efficiency will cut emissions by 29% in 2030 compared to a business as usual scenario, with biofuels and natural gas vehicles together accounting for 45% of potential fossil fuel displacement as nations look for new technologies to cut emissions.
The sharp cut – exceeding the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) target of 24% set by 188 nations at the Paris Conference of the Parties (COP21) in 2015 – will be realized from a combination of low-carbon fuels, alternative fuel vehicles, and improved fuel efficiencies.
As this Lux chart shows, global emissions from the transport sector are not falling, with all the changes in auto design and fuels undertaken to date — they are rising and expected to accelerate, because of more cars on the road around the world. Overall, global road transportation accounts for a sixth of all global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions – and its share is rising.
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Baselining from today, with a significant percentage of biofuels already in the mix — future emissions cuts are likely to come from new low-carbon feedstocks. Adding 10 billion gallons of advanced biofuels into the road transport mix by 2030 would generate a 5% savings on emissions compared to 2015, using a mix of oilseeds, residues such as MSW, animal and crop waste, cellulosic crops and woody biomass.
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The question of where the new fuels will come from will be less about availability — at these kinds of volumes — and more about project development, feedstock cost, biorefinery capex, and the logistics of building supply chains.
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Depending on the mix, some issues loom more than others. In the case of energy crops, there’s the proposition to the grower and the development of harvesting equipment, transport from field to refinery gate, storage, and pre-treatment.
With residues like corn stover, the grower proposition changes as it’s not a novel commitment of land to a novel crop, but there’s still a proposition to be made. And all the other questions from harvest to pre-treatment are there, only different. With fats, oils and greases, there’s no grower proposition at all, and harvesting is not an issue, but the value proposition and all the other elements come into play, and change.
With municipal solid waste, the value equation changes as there’s a payment not to a grower, but rather to a processor to take it off the municipality’s hands.
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It is unlikely that any country, no matter how ardent about emissions or replete with dollars, with have the resources to fully develop supply chains for every possible new source of fuel, chemical, or biomaterial feedstock available in the Advanced Bioeconomy. There are more than 100 feedstocks, and according to the Billion Ton Report — take it from the title — in the US alone there could be more than 1 billion tons available. That’s a lot of pre-treatment studies and tests, biomass depots, trucks, barges, rail cars, harvesters, baling wire, sorters & purifiers, choppers and grinders, and software to track it all. READ MORE and MORE (Ethanol Producer Magazine)
