Fuel for Sustainable Mobility
Liquid or gaseous fuels are essential for the operation of internal combustion engines (ICEs).
The quality of the fuels used in a vehicle can improve or decrease the performance of the vehicle and its emission control systems. Therefore, any low or zero-carbon, renewable and sustainable fuels that will be available in the coming years will need to match the specification of the best conventional fuels.
The use of drop-in sustainable renewable fuels effectively lowers greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions when assessed by an objective Well-to-Wheel CO2 assessment. These drop-in fuels can be used by the current fleet as these vehicles do not need any technology upgrades. This will result in an immediate reduction of WtW GHG emissions. Furthermore, drop-in sustainable renewable fuels can make use of the available fuelling infrastructure. The increased blending of sustainable renewable fuels in the existing European fuelling infrastructure will, therefore, help to further reduce GHG emissions in the short term.
Also, a shift from fossil fuel to low-carbon liquid fuels from non-fossil origin, with no or very limited net CO2 emissions during their production and use compared to fossil-based fuels, will enable internal combustion engine applications to continue contributing with a positive environmental impact
In the context of low-carbon and (blending of) sustainable renewable fuel, AECC fully supports the European Commission policy priority of significantly reducing CO2 emissions from road and non-road transport and reducing the dependency on fossil fuel. The revision of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), increasing the Member States’ renewable fuels objectives as well as increasing the greenhouse gas intensity reduction for road transport, will bring bigger volumes of renewable fuels to the European network.
AECC recognises the importance of sustainable low-carbon and renewable fuels in the future of road transport. For this reason, AECC has tested more sustainable and renewable fuels in each of the AECC demonstration projects.
In light- and heavy-duty demo vehicle programmes, AECC has tested sustainable renewable fuels which can substantially reduce WtW CO2 emissions.
The AECC light-duty gasoline demo vehicle has also been tested with Blue Gasoline and with e-gasoline and the AECC heavy-duty diesel vehicle has been tested with HVO and e-diesel. These results have been published by AECC…. light-duty diesel, light-duty gasoline and heavy-duty diesel.
Source: Shell(2018a) – Link
Note: For e-diesel produced from solar and wind power sources only, and transported from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe on a marine vessel running on heavy fuel oil, a well-to-wheel (WTW) GHG intensity of approximately 4g CO2/km is obtained. This GHG intensity can be reduced further if the marine vessel is run on low-carbon fuels. The same amount of CO2 that is emitted at the tailpipe of the e-fuel powered vehicle (tank-to-wheel, TTW) is captured from air while producing the e-fuel. This is shown as a negative GHG emission, or a well-to-tank (WTT) credit, on figure above. On WTW basis, therefore, the tailpipe CO2 and the captured CO2 cancel each other out.