Tag: e-fuels

Pigs Might Fly

Every “net zero” solution seems to cause problems. The Law of Unintended Consequences applies to net zero as ruthlessly as it does to everything else in life.

From Climate Scepticism

By MARK HODGSON

The problem

A little over three years ago, the BBC’s Future Planet series informed us that “[a]round 2.4% of global CO2 emissions come from aviation. Together with other gases and the water vapour trails produced by aircraft, the industry is responsible for around 5% of global warming.” Worse still:

…emissions from planes are rising rapidly – they increased by 32% between 2013 and 2018. While improving fuel efficiency is gradually reducing the emissions per passenger, it is not keeping up with the rapid increase in total passenger numbers, which are projected to double in the next 20 years.

Seven years ago, CarbonBrief decided to do some sums and concluded that even if the aviation industry met its own targets, it would be consuming 12% of the global carbon budget compatible with the mythical 1.5C, by 2050. If it fails to meet its targets, things will be so bad that its share of that budget could rise to 27%.

What is to be done?

Well, the Guardian has just published an article on its website discussing the options. We are reminded of the problem:

…passenger numbers are booming, with rampant demand for travel after Covid. Airlines are gearing up for worldwide growth, as China reopens and Indian carriers expand.

Unfortunately the Holy Grail seems to be beyond us for now:

Bar the obvious solution of flying less, immediate tangible steps to cut CO2 are limited. Commercial flights using hydrogen or electric power are, at best, a hope for the future. Replacing old fleets with modern fuel-efficient planes for less CO2 a head is a step most airlines are taking – but that benefits the bottom line more than the environment when more people fly.

The magical elixir, it seems, is now “sustainable aviation fuel” (SAF). Unfortunately:

Airlines might be using “every single drop” of SAF available, but that amounts to 0.1% of the total jet fuel needed – and supplies are impossible to find in much of the world.

Synthetic or e-fuels are supposedly an answer – “seen as the most credible way forward by many – involving a process that draws carbon dioxide from the air, albeit energy-intensively, rather than using sources that are limited or problematic.”

Problematic solutions

Almost incredibly, one of the “problematic” solutions that has been touted is the use of animal fats. Pigs seem to be in the firing line Quite apart from the ethical problem of raising pigs in order to kill them so that flying can carry on with a clean conscience, there is a rather practical consideration too:

According to a report by the Brussels-based charity Transport and Environment, creating enough SAF for a transatlantic flight would require the fat of 8,800 pigs….

…Tim Clark, the president of Emirates Airlines, asked: “There’s only so many animals you can slaughter to get the oil … Where’s the feedstock?” For him, e-fuels are more feasible, but he warned: “Money is probably the biggest single blocker, because these are hugely expensive programmes. So I’m afraid that means nuclear coming into the mix. That’s not going to sit well with Greens, but in the end, I don’t see how you’re going to drive enough power to get your synthetic fuels and power the rest of the global economy sustainably with wind or whatever it may be.”

Oh dear, it’s a tricky conundrum. For once, however, the BBC beat the Guardian to the story. “Using pig fat as green jet fuel will hurt planet, experts warn”, they advised us as long ago as 31st May. And the BBC gives us plenty of detail that is rather concerning:

The fact that animal fats are used as fuel will come as a surprise to many.

For centuries tallow and lard have been used to make candles, soaps and cosmetics.

However, over the last 20 years or so, biodiesel made from these animal wastes or from used cooking oils, has steadily grown in use in the UK and further afield.

Across Europe, fuel made from dead animals has grown fortyfold since 2006, according to the new research.

Much of this material is used in cars and trucks as biodiesel, which is classed as a sustainable fuel, and as such it has a much lower carbon footprint under the rules.

But UK and EU governments are now very keen to increase the use of these types of waste to make aviation greener.

To that end they are putting in place challenging mandates that will require airlines to use a bigger proportion of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in their tanks.

For the UK it’s going to be 10% by 2030, for the EU 6%.

Given what follows, the Guardian and the BBC must both be offering up thanks for Brexit:

With the UK likely to restrict the use of animal products and used cooking oils, flights that refuel across Britain will be likely to have only small amounts of animal-derived material in their engines.

In the EU, airlines will have a 6% sustainable aviation fuel target for 2030 of which 1.2% must come from e-kerosene. Assuming the remaining 4.8% is derived entirely by animal fat, that would require around 400 pigs per transatlantic flight.

Yet another dilemma

And that’s not all.

Among those industries who might have to source different ingredients if aviation consumes a greater share of animal fat are pet food manufacturers.

They currently utilise a significant amount of the better quality animal by-products to help feed the UK’s 38 million pets.

“These are really valuable ingredients for us and they are hard to replace, and they’re put to good use already in a very sustainable way,” said Nicole Paley, deputy chief executive of UK Pet Food, the manufacturers’ trade association.

“So actually diverting these ingredients to biofuels is actually creating another problem. It would put us in competition with the aviation industry. And when it comes to the purse strings of the aviation sector, the pet food industry would find it really difficult to compete.”…

…Many in the biofuel industry are concerned that the proposed changes might also see animal fats diverted from one form of transport to another.

“If you make a big incentive for use of these lipids, animal fats, and used cooking oils, in aviation, it will inevitably take it away from other things,” said Dickon Posnett from Argent Energy, a waste-based biodiesel producer in the UK and Europe.

“So if you want to increase aviation sustainability, at the expense of truck sustainability, then crack on. But that’s a decision for the government to make.”

Conclusion

Every “net zero” solution seems to cause problems. The Law of Unintended Consequences applies to net zero as ruthlessly as it does to everything else in life.

Europeans May Be Rejecting the EV Kool-Aid

You may not know it if you rely solely on American media, but there is a growing revolt across much of Europe against Net Zero mandates in general and electric vehicle mandates in particular.

From CFACT

By Duggan Flanakin 

Planet Earth Europe zone. Elements of this image furnished by NASA

You may not know it if you rely solely on American media, but there is a growing revolt across much of Europe against Net Zero mandates in general and electric vehicle mandates in particular.

It seems that, led by luxury carmakers, the future may be bright for the venerable internal combustion engine if new synthetic fuels technologies can produce an affordable replacement for gasoline and diesel fuels.

The revolt had been brewing ever since Europe got a wakeup call with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that upset the Net Zero applecart and led even Germany to reopen coal-fired power plants. Still, the EU last November had struck a provisional deal on a new vehicle emissions law that would have banned the sale of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles by 2035.

Two months later, though, the new Meloni government in Italy began to raise objections. The forced transition to EVs has already hit the Italian auto industry with job cuts, leading Transport Minister Matteo Salvini to argue that it makes no sense to put thousands of jobs at risk when there are plenty of reasons to keep ICE vehicles on the road with a carbon-neutral fuel.

Italy’s balking opened the door for German Finance Minister Christian Lindner to switch his government’s position to demand an exception for hydrogen-derived, carbon-neutral synthetic e-fuels (produced by electrolysis with added carbon) that can power ICE vehicles. Porsche, which has invested $75 million in a pilot plant to make e-fuels, and Ferrari could preserve their rich heritage and iconic models and still comply with zero-emissions requirements with e-fuels.

German Transport Minister Volker Wissing agreed, stating that, “We need e-fuels as there is no alternative if we want to operate our vehicle fleet in a climate-neutral way. Whoever is serious about climate-neutral mobility must keep all technological options open and also use them. I don’t understand this fight against the car and why people want to ban some technologies.”

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has long objected to the EU ban and had pledged to do “anything” to stop the “pseudo-green idea by rich countries and bureaucrats from Brussels” to ban gasoline and diesel engines. Polish families, he contended, cannot afford these expensive vehicles, and an ICE ban would cause Polish firms producing car components for well-known global brands to suffer irreparable harm.

As by simply abstaining from a final vote on the hard ICE vehicle ban, Germany could have killed the proposed EU legislation, the European Commission agreed to draft a compromise to allow the sale of ICE vehicles capable of running on e-fuels after 2035. Environmental groups objected, claiming that – because gasoline and diesel will still be available to power older vehicles – owners of e-fuel capable vehicles will cheat and fill up with gasoline.

Alex Keynes, clean fuels manager for the NGO Transport & Environment, claimed that e-fuels are too expensive to be given a seat at the table. He cited a T&E study that concluded that e-fuels would be 47 percent more expensive than petrol in France in 2030. [What he did not say was whether even that fuel cost differential would make e-fueled ICE vehicles more expensive to own and drive than lithium-battery EVs.]

Ferrari’s Benedetto Vigna scoffed at the T&E rhetoric. He expects the price of e-fuels to fall as they become more popular and that these fuels would allow carmakers to focus on producing lower cost e-fuels instead of expensive battery-powered cars that have their own limitations. Besides, suggested car industry veteran Andrew Graves, e-fuels may also be the answer for keeping older model vehicles on the road while further reducing emissions.

In the United Kingdom (no longer in the EU), former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in a move to one-up the EU, decreed a ban on new ICE vehicles by 2030 and on new hybrid vehicles by 2035.The adoption of this modified ban by the EU is putting pressure on the British government to follow suit.

Former Tory cabinet minister Sir John Redwood urged the Sunak government to consider the fact that, “Britain is in a desperate struggle to keep its car industry, and if we insist on phasing petrol and diesel out well before anyone else, we will find it harder to attract investment. The fewer bans there are,” he added, “the better to promote growth.” Like their Italian and German counterparts, British carmakers Aston Martin and McLaren are both investigating e-fuels for their future models.

There are other reasons that these bans on ICE vehicles are impractical. Graves says there is already a risk that there will not be enough EV charging stations or battery-making plants to satisfy demand in such a short timeframe. The still-fledgling industry remains beset with performance and safety concerns – as well as concerns over the environmental and societal damage done from the mining of critical metals used in EV batteries.

Another concern is cost, and thus popularity. EV sales have fallen across Europe with the lifting of subsidies. EV sales in Germany fell by a third from January 2022 to January 2023, and the market share fell from 55 percent of all car sales in December 2022 to just 15 percent in January 2023. The EV market share in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands fell by 50 percent month-to-month.

Automakers are still losing money in their quest to build all-EV fleets. Ford reported that its U.S. EV business had losses totaling $2.1 billion, a figure expected to rise to $3 billion in 2023. Ford finance chief John Lawler said it was normal for a startup to rack up losses, but if people have alternatives, not even the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies may be sufficient to turn car loving Americans into passive drivers of vehicles they cannot repair.

Finally, Europeans may be waking up to the realities of Chinese domination of the EV market and their attempted takeover of the European [and American] auto industry as well. The largest British auto dealership, Pendragon, has agreed with Chinese EV manufacturer BYD to sell its cars in the United Kingdom.

According to Ben Marlow, the Telegraph’s chief city commentator, the Chinese plan is to flood Europe with their own cheaper EV models to undercut European automakers and increase their market share. Not only does China control the market for many EV components, the Beijing government has thrown billions of dollars in subsidies to its EV industry.

And as Italy’s Matteo Salvini so eloquently put it, EU countries need to avoid “giving China entire industries and hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Author

  • Duggan FlanakinDuggan Flanakin
  • Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.
  • A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas.
  • A brief history of his multifaceted career appears in his book, “Infinite Galaxies: Poems from the Dugout.”

Finally, the Europeans Revolt Over Net Zero Mandates and the Electric Vehicle Kool-Aid

You may not know it if you rely solely on American media, but there is a growing revolt across much of Europe against Net Zero mandates in general and electric vehicle mandates in particular.

From Real Clear Energy

By Duggan Flanakin

You may not know it if you rely solely on American media, but there is a growing revolt across much of Europe against Net Zero mandates in general and electric vehicle mandates in particular.

It seems that, led by luxury carmakers, the future may be bright for the venerable internal combustion engine if new synthetic fuels technologies can produce an affordable replacement for gasoline and diesel fuels.

The revolt had been brewing ever since Europe got a wakeup call with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that upset the Net Zero applecart and led even Germany to reopen coal-fired power plants. Still, the EU last November had struck a provisional deal on a new vehicle emissions law that would have banned the sale of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles by 2035.

Two months later, though, the new Meloni government in Italy began to raise objections. The forced transition to EVs has already hit the Italian auto industry with job cuts, leading Transport Minister Matteo Salvini to argue that it makes no sense to put thousands of jobs at risk when there are plenty of reasons to keep ICE vehicles on the road with a carbon-neutral fuel.

Italy’s balking opened the door for German Finance Minister Christian Lindner to switch his government’s position to demand an exception for hydrogen-derived, carbon-neutral synthetic e-fuels (produced by electrolysis with added carbon) that can power ICE vehicles. Porsche, which has invested $75 million in a pilot plant to make e-fuels, and Ferrari could preserve their rich heritage and iconic models and still comply with zero-emissions requirements with e-fuels.

German Transport Minister Volker Wissing agreed, stating that, “We need e-fuels as there is no alternative if we want to operate our vehicle fleet in a climate-neutral way. Whoever is serious about climate-neutral mobility must keep all technological options open and also use them. I don’t understand this fight against the car and why people want to ban some technologies.”

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has long objected to the EU ban and had pledged to do “anything” to stop the “pseudo-green idea by rich countries and bureaucrats from Brussels” to ban gasoline and diesel engines. Polish families, he contended, cannot afford these expensive vehicles, and an ICE ban would cause Polish firms producing car components for well-known global brands to suffer irreparable harm.

As by simply abstaining from a final vote on the hard ICE vehicle ban, Germany could have killed the proposed EU legislation, the European Commission agreed to draft a compromise to allow the sale of ICE vehicles capable of running on e-fuels after 2035. Environmental groups objected, claiming that – because gasoline and diesel will still be available to power older vehicles – owners of e-fuel capable vehicles will cheat and fill up with gasoline.

Alex Keynes, clean fuels manager for the NGO Transport & Environment, claimed that e-fuels are too expensive to be given a seat at the table. He cited a T&E study that concluded that e-fuels would be 47 percent more expensive than petrol in France in 2030. [What he did not say was whether even that fuel cost differential would make e-fueled ICE vehicles more expensive to own and drive than lithium-battery EVs.]

Ferrari’s Benedetto Vigna scoffed at the T&E rhetoric. He expects the price of e-fuels to fall as they become more popular and that these fuels would allow carmakers to focus on producing lower cost e-fuels instead of expensive battery-powered cars that have their own limitations. Besides, suggested car industry veteran Andrew Graves, e-fuels may also be the answer for keeping older model vehicles on the road while further reducing emissions.

In the United Kingdom (no longer in the EU), former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in a move to one-up the EU, decreed a ban on new ICE vehicles by 2030 and on new hybrid vehicles by 2035.The adoption of this modified ban by the EU is putting pressure on the British government to follow suit.

Former Tory cabinet minister Sir John Redwood urged the Sunak government to consider the fact that, “Britain is in a desperate struggle to keep its car industry, and if we insist on phasing petrol and diesel out well before anyone else, we will find it harder to attract investment. The fewer bans there are,” he added, “the better to promote growth.” Like their Italian and German counterparts, British carmakers Aston Martin and McLaren are both investigating e-fuels for their future models.

There are other reasons that these bans on ICE vehicles are impractical. Graves says there is already a risk that there will not be enough EV charging stations or battery-making plants to satisfy demand in such a short timeframe. The still-fledgling industry remains beset with performance and safety concerns – as well as concerns over the environmental and societal damage done from the mining of critical metals used in EV batteries.

Another concern is cost, and thus popularity. EV sales have fallen across Europe with the lifting of subsidies. EV sales in Germany fell by a third from January 2022 to January 2023, and the market share fell from 55 percent of all car sales in December 2022 to just 15 percent in January 2023. The EV market share in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands fell by 50 percent month-to-month.

Automakers are still losing money in their quest to build all-EV fleets. Ford reported that its U.S. EV business had losses totaling $2.1 billion, a figure expected to rise to $3 billion in 2023. Ford finance chief John Lawler said it was normal for a startup to rack up losses, but if people have alternatives, not even the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies may be sufficient to turn car loving Americans into passive drivers of vehicles they cannot repair.

Finally, Europeans may be waking up to the realities of Chinese domination of the EV market and their attempted takeover of the European [and American] auto industry as well. The largest British auto dealership, Pendragon, has agreed with Chinese EV manufacturer BYD to sell its cars in the United Kingdom.

According to Ben Marlow, the Telegraph’s chief city commentator, the Chinese plan is to flood Europe with their own cheaper EV models to undercut European automakers and increase their market share. Not only does China control the market for many EV components, the Beijing government has thrown billions of dollars in subsidies to its EV industry.

And as Italy’s Matteo Salvini so eloquently put it, EU countries need to avoid “giving China entire industries and hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

NOTE: The concern over Chinese dominance of the EV market has reached the Colonies! Just days after Interior Secretary admitted that the Biden Administration’s push for EVs will deepen U.S. reliance on China, Chase Bank CEO Jamie Dimon, in his annual letter to shareholders, warned that China’s dominance of the green energy supply chain, coupled with the Biden EV policy, will imperil U.S. national security. Yet the juggernaut rolls on unimpeded.

Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and a frequent writer on public policy issues.