Top 5: What It’s Really Going to Take to Reach Net Zero

Aviation Fuel/Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)Business News/Analysis European Union (EU)International Opinions Policy Sustainability

May 27, 2021

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by Tammy Klein (Transportation Energy Strategies) ... Reaching Net Zero: It’s going to be hard and requires action by governments this decade to get there, says both the ITF and IEA in separate studies.

Renewable & Low-Carbon Liquid Fuels Platform: The Europeans have banded together to press the case for liquid fuels as a vital part of decarbonization. The Americans should do the same, I argue.
Electrofuels: Though viewed as a R&D fuel in the U.S., automakers, shipping companies and airlines in Europe intend to scale them up.
EV Infrastructure: Public charging isn’t that great in the U.S. What needs to happen to change this?
Clean Electrification and Hydrogen: They can deliver us to net zero by 2050, according to the Energy Transitions Commission (and similar to IEA’s conclusions).

1. SHFT: EVs and Green Policies Aren’t Enough: Transport CO2 Emissions Set to Rise 16% by 2050 – global transport activity is expected to more than double by 2050, while traffic emissions will rise by 16% compared to 2015. And that’s even if existing commitments to cut down carbon emissions are carried out, says this article which discusses the International Transport Forum’s (ITF) latest projections on the future of transport.

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Notably, 75% of all urban passenger transport emissions come from private cars, which intensifies the necessity for more sustainable alternatives. Similarly, freight emits more than 40% of all transport CO2.

IEA Net Zero Report

A separate report from IEA reviews outlines a pathway with the changes that are required to reach net-zero emissions globally by 2050, which IEA says are poorly understood.

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So, what has to happen to reach net zero emissions? An awful lot, as the figure below shows. Note the transport-related actions which include scaling up EV sales to reach 60% of car sales by 2030; for heavy-duty trucks, 60% by 2035. By 2040, 50% of fuels in aviation are low emission fuels. Internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) would be phased out by 2035.

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IEA notes sustainable bioenergy delivers emissions reductions across a wide range of areas, including low-emissions fuels for planes, ships and other forms of transport, and the replacement of natural gas with biomethane to provide heating and electricity.

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2. FuelsEurope: The Renewable & Low-Carbon Liquid Fuels Platform, towards Transport Fuels’ Transformation – The liquid fuels industry is Europe has come together to form the Renewable & Low-Carbon Liquid Fuels Platform, to among other goals, press the European Commission “to ensure EU Institutions to work out an enabling regulatory framework that values and supports all low-carbon technologies for the benefit of economies and consumers.”

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3. Wall Street Journal: Can E-Fuels Save the Combustion Engine? – Electric vehicles, hydrogen and now e-fuels are in the famous hype cycle. A few years ago, no one outside Germany and perhaps the U.S. national laboratories such as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory were even talking about e-fuels. This article discusses the growing interest in synthetic fuels produced by mixing hydrogen derived from renewable sources usually with captured carbon dioxide to create a virtually carbon-neutral version of fuels such as gasoline, diesel and kerosene.

Synthetic fuels have many advantages, according to supporters: They can be blended with conventional fuels—density and quality are similar—or replace them completely without altering existing pipelines, refilling stations and engines. They also can be easily transported and stored for extended periods. The big hurdle is cost. READ MORE

One Man's Opinion: When green energy is not so clean (Clayton News Daily)

Here’s What it Will Take for EVs to Take Over the Car Market -- BloombergNEF, an energy research firm, says 70 percent of new vehicles will be EVs by 2040. But governments will have to work harder to get to net zero emissions. (Car and Driver)