Biofuels: Thermodynamic sense and nonsense

Ponton, J.W.

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2009.02.003

Cited by 46 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 4 publications

(3 reference statements)

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“…Biofuels are however expected to play an important role for the energy supply in the transportation sector for decades to come according to many energy forecasts and projections (OECD/FAO, 2012, BP, 2012, Igliński et al, 2012, Exxon Mobil, 2013. Biofuels encompass adequate chemical properties and can offer a type of energy source for transportation that societies require today, which puts them in a unique position in relation to other alternative renewable fuels available (Ponton, 2009). …”

Section: Related Publicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…mitigation of climate change, energy security and in the transition to a more sound and sustainable economy. However, in order to achieve these multiple goals not only must sufficient quantities of biofuels be produced, but they also need to be produced and used in a resource-efficient way (Ponton, 2009). …”

Section: Biofuelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Figure 1 in section 1.2) (Feiz et al, 2013, cf. Mangoyana and Smith, 2011, Ponton, 2009). Integrated and well embedded biofuel production systems require coordination and cooperation of different actors at different levels in society which makes the management of the systems complicated and the development of such production systems challenging (Dautzenberg and Hanf, 2008).…”

Section: Integrated Resource-efficient and Multi-functional Biofuel Prmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Conditions for resource-efficient production of biofuels for transport in Sweden

Ersson¹

2014

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Transportation has continued to increase worldwide and fossil-fuel dependency is strong which leads to a number of problems, e.g. increased emissions of green-house gases (GHG) and risks related to energy security. Biofuels have until now been one of the few renewable alternatives which have been able to replace fossil fuels on a large scale. The biofuel share in relation to the total use of fuel in the transportation sector is still small, but in many places in the world political targets are set to increase the share of renewable fuels, of which biofuels are supposed to be an important part. Within the European Union targets for renewable energy have been set, including within the transportation sector, where 10% shall come from renewable sources by 2020 according to the EU Renewable Energy Directive (EU RES). Biofuels also need to fulfill the sustainability criteria in the EU RES, to be regarded as renewable. Depending on how biofuels are produced their resource efficiency varies, and the differences in environmental and economic performance can for instance be significant.The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyze conditions for a development towards increased and more resource-efficient production of biofuels in Sweden. The conditions have been studied from a regional resource perspective and from a biofuel producer perspective since it has been assumed that the producers are in possession of important knowledge, and potentially will play an important role in future biofuel development. The concept of resource efficiency used in this thesis includes an environmental and economic perspective as well as an overall societal dimension to some extent. The region of Östergötland in Sweden was used for the assessment of the resourcefocused biofuel potential for the year 2030, where two scenarios based on assessments regarding socio-technical development in relation to regional resources were used. The scenarios were based on semi-structured interviews with biofuel actors, literature studies and information from experts in the field. In the EXPAN (Expansion) scenario a continued development in line with the current one was assumed, but also an increased availability of feedstock primarily within the agricultural and waste sectors (also including byproducts from industry) for biofuel production. In the INNTEK (Innovation and Technology development) scenario greater technological progress was assumed to also enable the use of some unconventional feedstock besides increased available arable land and improved collection/availability of certain feedstock. Biomass feedstock from four categories was included in the potential: waste, agriculture, forestry and aquatic environments. One important feedstock which was not included in this study, but which is often included in studies of potential, is lignocellulosic material from the forest. This choice was also supported by the regional actors who judged it as less probable that there will be any large-scale use of such feedstock for biofuels in this region wit...

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Section: Related Publicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Biofuelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Integrated Resource-efficient and Multi-functional Biofuel Prmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Conditions for resource-efficient production of biofuels for transport in Sweden

Ersson¹

2014

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“…A favorable comparison, in the case of biofuel production, would ideally agree with the following aspects: 1. the fuel should supply an amount of energy superior to that required to produce it; 2. the long-term feedstock supply should be guaranteed, in order to assure long term biofuel; 3. supply to the market, which depends on the sustainability of the underlying activities; 4. the emission of unwanted substances to the environment should be less than those that would result from the use of a fossil fuel to obtain the same amount of energy; 5. land use should not compromise food production, nor the respect for the ecosystem balance. Due to their comparable physical properties, biodiesel and fossil-based diesel can be used for conventional diesel engines [4][5][6]. Thus, the primary concern of this study is the question as to whether or not the production of biodiesel is comparable to the production of fossil diesel from an environmental point of view, taking into account all stages of the life cycle of these two products.…”

Section: Lyfe Cycle Definitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Biodiesel is Environmentally Better than Traditional, Fossil-based Diesel: an LCA Approach

Pubule¹,

Romagnoli²,

Blumberga³

2011

Scientific Journal of Riga Technical University. Environmental and Climate Technologies

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-In Latvia, rapeseed methyl ester (RME) is generally considered to have a significant economic potential in the field of biofuels. As investments grow, it is important to evaluate the environmental impacts of this production and to highlight the main sources of these impacts. Nowadays, the share of biofuels in the transport sector in Latvia is attested to have a value of 0.3% (around 75% biodiesel and 25% bioethanol). Biofuel production in Latvia doubled in the last two years: the current total biodiesel production is approximately 64 ktonne/year (year 2009). The aim of this paper is to understand and model the environmental performance of the biodiesel produced from rapeseeds under the local Latvian conditions. Firstly, energy crops were evaluated by assessing their levels of biodiesel productivity. Secondly, the current Latvian climatic conditions and cultivation parameters were taken into account. To conclude, a comparison with the impacts of fossil based diesel was conducted.

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“…However, with this onset, biofuels have met much criticism [1,2] which ranges from debates about the competition with food to the energy used to produce the biofuels [3]. Dissimilarities and criticism result primarily from different assumptions made, system boundaries used, technologies and the reference energy systems used in life cycle assessment of biofuel systems [4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the Environmental Performance of Integrated Ethanol and Biogas Production

Martin

Svensson

Fonseca

2011

Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings

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As the production of biofuels continues to expand worldwide, criticism about, e.g. the energy output versus input and the competition with food has been questioned. However, biofuels may be optimized to increase the environmental performance through the concepts of industrial symbiosis. This paper offers a quantification of the environmental performance of industrial symbiosis in the biofuel industry through integration of biogas and ethanol processes using a life cycle approach. Results show that although increasing integration is assumed to produce environmental benefits in industrial symbiosis, not all impact categories have achieved this and the results depend upon the allocation methods chosen.

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Biofuels: Thermodynamic sense and nonsense

Cited by 46 publications

References 4 publications

Conditions for resource-efficient production of biofuels for transport in Sweden

Conditions for resource-efficient production of biofuels for transport in Sweden

Why Biodiesel is Environmentally Better than Traditional, Fossil-based Diesel: an LCA Approach

Assessing the Environmental Performance of Integrated Ethanol and Biogas Production

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