The Future of Fuels: Pathways to Sustainable Transportation is a multi-year, interdisciplinary MITEI-led study analyzing promising pathways to decarbonize hard-to-abate transportation sectors such as aviation, shipping, and heavy trucking.
About
Decarbonization of aviation, international shipping, 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. Drop-in fuels could also eliminate trillions of dollars of costs for fleet replacement and infrastructure build-out.
This MITEI-led study is analyzing and assessing promising feedstock and pathway combinations for production of sustainable fuels, including both biofuels derived from biomass and e-fuels derived from hydrogen and carbon dioxide. For biofuels, we are considering a wide range of possible biomass raw materials, and multiple biofuel pathways, and assessing combinations of pathways. For e-fuels, various carbon dioxide sources, including direct air capture, are being considered. For each combination of raw material and conversion pathway, the study is assessing costs, lifecycle carbon intensity, other environmental impacts, land use, scalability, supply chain security and resiliency, technology readiness level, and timescales. A key aspect of the study is analysis of the current domestic and international policies that shape the decarbonization of transportation, as well as policies that could enable a more efficient trajectory for this energy transition.
Support MITEI’s Future of Fuels study
We welcome financial support for this groundbreaking and timely MITEI-led study. William H. Green, MITEI director and Hoyt C. Hottel Professor of Chemical Engineering, is leading the study, and Randall Field, MITEI’s director of research, serves as executive director. MIT faculty, research staff, and postdoctoral researchers round out the study’s team of engineers, scientists, and policy experts. An advisory board, consisting of one individual from each funding organization, as well as invited experts from academia, nongovernmental organizations, and government labs, provides the study team with feedback and guidance regarding the study’s mission. At the end of the study, the team will release a public report on results, findings, and recommendations, as well as present the major findings and recommendations from the study via a webcast.
Current fuels that are used in transportation are contributing about a third of CO2 emissions out of the fossil fuel combustion today. One potential solution is sustainable drop-in fuels. These fuels are largely compatible with existing fleet engines, including airplanes, ships, trucks, trains, and cars. And these fuels are compatible with the massive global infrastructure.
Advancing sustainable fuels
Today, about 95% of global transportation fuel is derived from petroleum. Sustainable fuels that produce lower greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum-based fuels across their lifecycles offer a promising pathway to decarbonizing critical transportation sectors such as aviation, shipping, and long-distance trucking, which will likely rely on liquid fuels for many more decades.
