Conditions for resource-efficient production of biofuels for transport in Sweden

Abstract

Transportation has continued to increase worldwide and fossil-fuel dependency is strong which leads to a number of problems, e.g. increased emissions of green-house gases (GHG) and risks related to energy security. Biofuels have until now been one of the few renewable alternatives which have been able to replace fossil fuels on a large scale. The biofuel share in relation to the total use of fuel in the transportation sector is still small, but in many places in the world political targets are set to increase the share of renewable fuels, of which biofuels are supposed to be an important part. Within the European Union targets for renewable energy have been set, including within the transportation sector, where 10% shall come from renewable sources by 2020 according to the EU Renewable Energy Directive (EU RES). Biofuels also need to fulfill the sustainability criteria in the EU RES, to be regarded as renewable. Depending on how biofuels are produced their resource efficiency varies, and the differences in environmental and economic performance can for instance be significant.The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyze conditions for a development towards increased and more resource-efficient production of biofuels in Sweden. The conditions have been studied from a regional resource perspective and from a biofuel producer perspective since it has been assumed that the producers are in possession of important knowledge, and potentially will play an important role in future biofuel development. The concept of resource efficiency used in this thesis includes an environmental and economic perspective as well as an overall societal dimension to some extent. The region of Östergötland in Sweden was used for the assessment of the resourcefocused biofuel potential for the year 2030, where two scenarios based on assessments regarding socio-technical development in relation to regional resources were used. The scenarios were based on semi-structured interviews with biofuel actors, literature studies and information from experts in the field. In the EXPAN (Expansion) scenario a continued development in line with the current one was assumed, but also an increased availability of feedstock primarily within the agricultural and waste sectors (also including byproducts from industry) for biofuel production. In the INNTEK (Innovation and Technology development) scenario greater technological progress was assumed to also enable the use of some unconventional feedstock besides increased available arable land and improved collection/availability of certain feedstock. Biomass feedstock from four categories was included in the potential: waste, agriculture, forestry and aquatic environments. One important feedstock which was not included in this study, but which is often included in studies of potential, is lignocellulosic material from the forest. This choice was also supported by the regional actors who judged it as less probable that there will be any large-scale use of such feedstock for biofuels in this region wit...

Systems Analysis of Biogas Production—Part I Research Design

“…The evaluation of the studied systems and scenarios are made from different perspectives to get as comprehensive results as possible. Since the aim of this research design is to assess resource efficiency, the evaluation perspectives used are economy, energy and environment [3]. The environmental perspective should include at least the following subcategories: global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), and eutrophication potential (EP).…”

“…Systems analysis is needed to assess which treatment method is most resource efficient. Resource efficiency relates to the economic, energy and environmental performance of the systems studied [3]. This paper develops a research design for assessing resource efficiency of biogas production from organic by-products, compared to alternative treatment methods.…”