Current initiatives
Decarbonization of aviation, international shipping, and long-haul trucking is necessary to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions produced by the transportation sector. Sustainable fuels, including biofuels and electrofuels (e-fuels), could offer a promising solution for deep decarbonization of these hard-to-abate sectors if technical and economic barriers can be overcome.
The aviation, international shipping, and long-haul trucking sectors will be challenging to decarbonize due to their reliance on energy-dense liquid fuels that are usually petroleum-based. Sustainable fuel alternatives could achieve lower net-greenhouse gas emissions depending on their feedstocks and production pathways. However, they cannot currently be produced as inexpensively as petroleum-based fuels.
Sustainable fuels include biofuels derived from crops, agricultural or forest residues, or waste oils, and electrofuels (e-fuels) formulated by combining hydrogen with captured carbon dioxide to produce synthetic versions of today’s liquid fuels. Each of the many potential feedstocks and pathways for producing sustainable fuels has different carbon intensity, cost, supply chain, and scalability. The lifecycle emissions of each sustainable fuel depend heavily on the feedstock and the energy source used in fuel production, especially for e-fuels. Making sustainable fuels a widely-adopted alternative to petroleum-based fuels will require addressing technical, scalability, and economic barriers through both innovation and supportive policies.
A MITEI-led study on sustainable fuels is analyzing and assessing promising feedstocks and pathways for production of sustainable fuels, including biofuels derived from biomass and e-fuels derived from hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The study will include a comparison between sustainable drop-in fuels and the major non-drop-in fuels, such as renewable methanol, ethanol, ammonia, and natural gas. A key aspect of the study will be analysis of the current domestic and international policies that shape the decarbonization of long-distance transportation, as well as policies that could enable a more efficient trajectory for this energy transition.
Today the cost of producing drop-in fuels is high and they cannot be supplied at scale. That raises some questions. The time is right for us to work together to assess the status, the potential, and the next steps needed for sustainable fuels.
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