Time for full carbon accounting

By Zoltán Szabó, Special to The Digest

The sustainability aspects of transport fuels are in the spotlight this year in Brussels as a number of key files make their way through the process, namely the Energy Union package, the new Renewable Energy Directive, a communication on transport decarbonisation, and the bioenergy sustainability policy. Correct carbon accounting, or how to account for the total climate impact of various forms of transport energy is a hot topic. Policy makers are being urged to include indirect impacts in carbon accounting as well as direct ones and this includes indirect land use changes or “iLUC”. And rightly so. It’s high time comprehensive carbon accounting was introduced.

The notions of full carbon accounting, fossil fuel comparators and indirect land use change are jointly and equally important in evaluating the role of ethanol in decarbonizing road transport. Don’t get it? Then you shouldn’t be allowed get your hands on the policy file.

Europe’s petrol pumps currently supply petrol with about 5% bioethanol in it. But not everyone is convinced this is any better for the environment than plain old 100% fossil petrol. So how does this bioethanol substitute look to the cold calculating eye of full carbon accounting? It looks pretty damn good actually.

In fact, a comprehensive full carbon accounting of ethanol shows that it’ll do more to decarbonize EU transport than any other measure in the period up to 2020, and that these contributions will increase until such time as electric vehicles can fully kick in. How is this possible? Simple: it’s not just indirect land use change that is missing in the old EU carbon accounting models. It also down to the fact that the fossil fuel emissions calculations used in them don’t reflect real world conditions (think dieselgate and tar sand) and to the often overlooked engine efficiency improvements resulting from ethanol blending. iLUC accounting does indeed make bioethanol look a small bit less climate friendly (14 gCO2e/MJ for corn ethanol to be precise), but once you factor in the real carbon emissions of fossil fuel and the real engine efficiency improvements of ethanol then bioethanol blending looks very attractive.

Full carbon accounting needs to be just that. Full.

To those of you who understand the technicalities this means, for instance, that the RED fossil fuel comparator – a number which tells how much climate damaging CO2 gets released by fossil fuel – needs to be revised to 94.1 and possibly upwards to as high as 140 from its current non real world low of 83.8. Recent studies by the Commission and by expert analysts at Ecofys are in agreement on this.

In contrast, Europe’s homegrown climate friendly bioethanol comes in at just around 50 grams of CO2 per unit, iLUC included, or around half the fossil equivalent. Bioethanol denial, like climate change denial, doesn’t stand up to science and facts.

And the outlook actually gets better. Ethanol, due to its high octane level, allows engines run more efficiently (see the soon to be published meta-analysis the EC commissioned), meaning they can be smaller, lighter and consume less per kilometre. Watch this space as the Commission is taking a close look at the phenomenon. If, as seems likely, engine efficiency gets included in full carbon accounting, the bioethanol CO2 number drops even further, to something around 20 grams per unit for current E5 and E10 blends and lower still for E20 and E30. Add to this continuous improvements in bioethanol technology, yields and process efficiency to 2030 and ethanol can be expected to beat fossil fuel by more than 90%.

One day, hopefully in our lifetimes, there’ll be no liquid fuel burning in our car engines, no CO2 released whatsover, no noise and no exhausts. In the meantime though, ethanol is very fine stepping stone. It is time for full carbon accounting, based on real world data and science.

Zoltán Szabó, PhD in environmental economics, is sustainability advisor in the bioenergy industry. He has experience in public administration, research, NGOs and business, working toward reconciling climate, energy, agricultural and environmental policies.