Download or read book Assessment of Technologies for Compliance with the Low Carbon Fuel Standard written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book National Low Carbon Fuel Standard written by Sonia Yeh and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The abundance and low cost of petroleum over the past 150 years has enabled rapid economic growth and extraordinary mobility advancements. But dependence on petroleum fuels also has large downsides, including dependence on insecure supplies, volatile prices causing high economic costs, polluted and unhealthy air, climate change, and increasing threats to local environments as production moves into more fragile areas. The transition to low-carbon alternative transportation fuels is becoming more urgent. But their introduction is inhibited by a long list of market conditions and failures. These include sunk investments and technology lock-in by the automotive and energy industries, other forms of technological and market inertia impeding investments in deployment and R&D, cartel pricing, and the failure of markets to assign a price to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Various policies might be adopted to overcome these market conditions and barriers, ranging from pure market instruments such as carbon taxes to prescriptive mandates and voluntary actions. Each has different advantages and disadvantages. Some are easier to implement administratively, some are more economically efficient, and some are more effective in accelerating investments. None is perfect. One of the most compelling, assuming some level of urgency, is a broad, performance-based policy that targets greenhouse gas reduction -- what we refer to as a low carbon fuel standard (LCFS). In this report, we integrate scientific knowledge of alternative fuels -- including an assessment of economic, administrative, institutional, equity, political, and technological considerations -- to aid us in proposing a policy design for an LCFS for the United States. We have aimed for a policy design that would be effective, economically efficient, and broadly acceptable. An LCFS is a policy designed to accelerate the transition to low-carbon alternative transportation fuels by stimulating innovation and investment in new fuels and technologies. The goal is to provide a durable policy framework that will stimulate innovation and technological development. Since 2007, variations of an LCFS policy have been adopted by California, the European Union (Fuel Quality Directive, FQD), and British Columbia (Renewable and Low-Carbon Fuel Requirement Regulation, RLCFRR). Other states in the United States have been exploring the adoption of an LCFS policy, including states in the Midwest and the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic region, and the states of Oregon and Washington. The design of an LCFS is premised on the use of technology-neutral performance targets and credit trading, with the intent of harnessing market forces and providing industry with flexibility. It is also premised on the use of life-cycle measurements of GHG emissions, to assure that emissions are regulated effectively and scientifically. An LCFS is a hybrid of a regulatory and market policy instrument. It does not include mandates for any particular fuel or technology and as such does not attempt to pick winners or losers. Instead, it defines an average emissions intensity standard -- measured in grams CO2 equivalent per mega-joule of fuel energy (gCO2e/MJ) -- that all energy providers must achieve across all fuels they provide. Many options exist for meeting the standard. Regulated parties are free to employ any combination of strategies that suits their particular circumstances and perspectives -- including the purchase of credits from other companies. The breadth and reach of an LCFS, and the challenge of implementing an innovative policy, means that adoption of a national LCFS will not be easy or straightforward and will require careful analysis and design. It is necessary to address the cost-effectiveness of the policy (compared with other similar GHG policies) and to analyze ease of administration, fairness, equity, market flexibility, and impacts on energy security and sustainability. We have done so in a companion report, National Low Carbon Fuel Standard: Technical Analysis Report (TAR). This Policy Design Recommendations (PDR) report builds on insights and findings from the TAR. Below we recommend key policy design principles that chart a path toward developing a national LCFS policy.

Download or read book A Low carbon Fuel Standard for California written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Cost Effectiveness and Deployment of Fuel Economy Technologies for Light Duty Vehicles written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-09-28 with total page 812 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The light-duty vehicle fleet is expected to undergo substantial technological changes over the next several decades. New powertrain designs, alternative fuels, advanced materials and significant changes to the vehicle body are being driven by increasingly stringent fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission standards. By the end of the next decade, cars and light-duty trucks will be more fuel efficient, weigh less, emit less air pollutants, have more safety features, and will be more expensive to purchase relative to current vehicles. Though the gasoline-powered spark ignition engine will continue to be the dominant powertrain configuration even through 2030, such vehicles will be equipped with advanced technologies, materials, electronics and controls, and aerodynamics. And by 2030, the deployment of alternative methods to propel and fuel vehicles and alternative modes of transportation, including autonomous vehicles, will be well underway. What are these new technologies - how will they work, and will some technologies be more effective than others? Written to inform The United States Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards, this new report from the National Research Council is a technical evaluation of costs, benefits, and implementation issues of fuel reduction technologies for next-generation light-duty vehicles. Cost, Effectiveness, and Deployment of Fuel Economy Technologies for Light-Duty Vehicles estimates the cost, potential efficiency improvements, and barriers to commercial deployment of technologies that might be employed from 2020 to 2030. This report describes these promising technologies and makes recommendations for their inclusion on the list of technologies applicable for the 2017-2025 CAFE standards.

Download or read book B C Low Carbon Fuel Standard written by British Columbia. Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Biojet Fuel in Aviation Applications written by Cheng Tung Chong and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2021-06-27 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biojet fuels have the potential to make an important contribution towards decarbonising the aviation sector. Biojet Fuel in Aviation Applications: Production, Usage and Impact of Biofuels covers all aspects of this sustainable aviation fuel including aviation biofuel public policies, production technologies, physico-chemical properties, combustion performances, techno-economics of sustainable fuel production, sustainability and energywater-food (EWF) nexus. This must-have book also charts the current state of the industry by discussing the relevant industry players who are currently producing alternative aviation fuels and flight tests, while also providing a glimpse of the future of the industry. This comprehensive book is written for undergraduate students, postgraduate students, researchers, engineers and policy makers wanting to build up knowledge in the specific area of biojet fuel or the broader fields of sustainable energy and aeronautics. Reviews major aviation and biojet fuel policies, legislations, initiatives and roadmaps around the world Features existing and emerging biojet fuel production pathways from various feedstocks Highlights the key properties of biojet fuels that ensures inter-operability with conventional jet aviation fuel Discusses the economic aspects of the biojet fuel industry and the barriers preventing its commercialisation Examines the sustainability of biojet fuel from a life cycle assessment, energy balance and EWF nexus point of views

Download or read book Assessing Low carbon Fuel Technology Innovation Through a Technology Innovation System Approach written by Jeff Kessler and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing anthropogenic climate change will require a variety of novel technology solutions. Where will these solutions come from, and how can we foster their development? To answer these questions, it is important to delve into the process of technology innovation. We need to better understand how technological transitions happen, and we need to figure out how innovation can be directed. While the existing work on technology innovation is abundant, the innovation process largely remains a "black box," shrouded in mystery. Energy models that incorporate innovation concepts, such as experience curves, fail to consider the fundamental processes that drive innovation. More nuanced approaches to innovation, however, are largely qualitative and difficult to model or to employ. This makes it hard to draw objective conclusions, or to make predictions about technologies moving forward. This dissertation research establishes a set of methodological approaches to better break in to this innovation black box, aiding in the quantification of the more qualitative approaches to innovation. These methods are applied to better examine low-carbon technology innovation in transportation. Specifically, this dissertation looks at biofuel innovation and the more recent diffusion of electric vehicles. Patent trends, one traditional approach for quantifying innovations, are used to provide a point of comparison for the novel methodologies employed. This research shows that the innovation narrative and conclusions that can be drawn from patent data are largely dependent on how patents are classified. Employing statistical models in conjunction with computational linguistics and machine-learning algorithms, it is possible to classify large bodies of text. This methodology is applied to a large selection of patents to better classify biofuel technologies. Additionally, this method is applied to a large repository of textual media, such as newspaper articles and trade journals, to select for specific technologies, and to classify articles by the type of information they convey. This Technology Innovation System (TIS) database is believed to adequately proxy the flow of information over time, due to the large number of documents collected. The innovation trends captured in the TIS database align well with the biofuel narrative established in literature. There is also good alignment between patent data classified through this methodology and the TIS database.Through use of the TIS database in conjunction with deployment data and policy data, this dissertation demonstrates several applications for assessing technology innovation. Results can be used to provide suggestions, supported by the data, which may foster improved innovation outcomes for low-carbon transportation technologies.

Download or read book A Low Carbon Fuel Standard written by Brent D. Yacobucci and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On January 18, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an executive order directing the California Environmental Protection Agency to establish a Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). The California LCFS would require a 10% reduction in the carbon intensity of fuels in the State of California by 2020. It would require fuel suppliers to reduce the expected lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from motor fuels, based on fuels' energy content. In this way, the greenhouse gas intensity of transportation fuels would decrease, regardless of the growth in transportation or fuel demand. While California has not formally proposed regulations, the state Air Resources Board has released drafts of possible regulations.

Download or read book EPA Publications Bibliography written by United States. Environmental Protection Agency and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book National Low Carbon Fuel Standard written by Sonia Yeh and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Petroleum fuels make up essentially all of the transportation fuels used today. But fossil fuel use has many economic and environmental downsides, including a weakening of our energy security due to reliance on imported energy sources, air pollution that impacts health, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that contribute to climate change. To reduce fossil fuel use and GHG emissions in the transportation sector and improve energy security requires a coordinated effort to reduce travel demand, improve vehicle efficiency, and switch to cleaner, lower-carbon fuels. Here we focus on switching to new fuels and examine the potential role a national low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) can play in bringing this about. This report analyzes the costs and benefits of a national LCFS policy, together with or in place of the existing national Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2). The companion report, National Low Carbon Fuel Standard: Policy Design Recommendations (PDR), suggests how best to design an LCFS. Both consider the possibility of an LCFS replacing or being adopted alongside RFS2.

Download or read book A Low Carbon Fuel Standard in Washington State written by and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Economics of US Renewable Fuel Policies written by Gabriel E. Lade and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renewable fuel mandates are increasingly common policy tools used in the transportation fuel sector. The policies seek to reduce carbon emissions by expanding production of low-carbon, renewable fuels. Given the threat of global climate change and that transportation fuels contribute to over a quarter of US greenhouse gas emissions, reducing emissions in the sector must play an important role in any comprehensive climate policy. This dissertation studies the effects and efficiency of the two largest renewable fuel mandates in the US to date: the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). The work draws lessons from the RFS compliance credit market, as well as from conceptual and simulation models of the US fuel market in order to understand the impacts of alternative policy designs and market structures on the efficiency of the two policies. Overall, the work suggests that the fuel mandates in their current form are not well-suited to increase the penetration of renewable fuels beyond modest levels. In particular, both mandates are susceptible to high and volatile compliance costs due to constraints on the amount of renewable fuel that can be produced by upstream firms and consumed by end-users. As designed in the enacting legislation and rules, regulators can only respond to high compliance costs by reducing statutory mandates. Chapter 3 studies the market for compliance credits (RINs) under the RFS. The analysis focuses on the significant price volatility observed in the RIN market in 2013. Results from an econometric model studying RIN prices indicate that unexpected policy developments whereby the Environmental Protection Agency proposed large cuts to the RFS statutory mandates led to sudden and large decreases in RIN prices. This decreased the value of the subsidy (tax) that the RFS provides to the biofuel (fossil fuel) industry substantially. Furthermore, estimates from an econometric model of biofuel firm stock prices suggest that the loss in the RFS subsidy disproportionately harmed advanced biofuel producers. The findings are important as the future success of the RFS relies on the emergence of a viable advanced biofuel industry. Building on insights from the previous chapter, Chapter 4 develops a conceptual model to derive market effects and characterize the optimal design of two cost containment mechanisms that have been proposed or implemented under the RFS and LCFS. The results show that capping compliance costs with cost containment mechanisms may significantly improve the efficiency of fuel mandates. Simulations illustrate that in certain cases, the efficiency loss of an LCFS can nearly be eliminated by optimally setting a binding cap on compliance credit prices. Chapter 5 investigates the optimal design of renewable fuel mandates when either the conventional or renewable sector is imperfectly competitive. The chapter develops a two-sector model of firms facing a renewable fuel mandate that accommodates any degree of competition in either sector, including perfect competition as a special case. Simulations demonstrate that market power is important both in determining the optimal level of a fuel mandate and in determining whether fuel mandates are welfare improving. The increase in the share of renewable fuel under an optimal mandate increases in the degree of market power in the renewable sector, and decreases as the conventional sector becomes less competitive. Contrary to arguments from policy proponents, the findings suggest that fuel mandates are more desirable when the conventional sector is competitive and renewable firms have market power. Many of the issues discussed in this dissertation may be resolved through relatively simple amendments to existing regulations such as the inclusion of a cost-containment mechanism. Overall, however, the work suggests that a regulator seeking to reduce emissions in fuel markets may be better served enacting policies that price emission damages directly. Given the nascency of many advanced renewable fuel technologies and the high cost associated with expanding their production and consumption, an efficient carbon policy should allow for the possibility that reducing consumption of fossil fuels may be more efficient than increasing the market share of renewable fuels. Furthermore, if the fuel industry is imperfectly competitive, a regulator must account for both the presence of unpriced emissions and the market power distortion when choosing to enact a mandate and setting the policy stringency.

Download or read book Life Cycle Assessment LCA of Environmental and Energy Systems written by Fabrizio Passarini and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2021-04-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transition towards renewable energy sources and “green” technologies for energy generation and storage is expected to mitigate the climate emergency in the coming years. However, in many cases, this progress has been hampered by our dependency on critical materials or other resources that are often processed at high environmental burdens. Yet, many studies have shown that environmental and energy issues are strictly interconnected and require a comprehensive understanding of resource management strategies and their implications. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is among the most inclusive analytical techniques to analyze sustainability benefits and trade-offs within complex systems and, in this Special Issue, it is applied to assess the mutual influences of environmental and energy dimensions. The selection of original articles, reviews, and case studies addressed covers some of the main driving applications for energy requirements and greenhouse gas emissions, including power generation, bioenergy, biorefinery, building, and transportation. An insightful perspective on the current topics and technologies, and emerging research needs, is provided. Alone or in combination with integrative methodologies, LCA can be of pivotal importance and constitute the scientific foundation on which a full system understanding can be reached.

Download or read book Transitions to Alternative Vehicles and Fuels written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-04-14 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For a century, almost all light-duty vehicles (LDVs) have been powered by internal combustion engines operating on petroleum fuels. Energy security concerns about petroleum imports and the effect of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on global climate are driving interest in alternatives. Transitions to Alternative Vehicles and Fuels assesses the potential for reducing petroleum consumption and GHG emissions by 80 percent across the U.S. LDV fleet by 2050, relative to 2005. This report examines the current capability and estimated future performance and costs for each vehicle type and non-petroleum-based fuel technology as options that could significantly contribute to these goals. By analyzing scenarios that combine various fuel and vehicle pathways, the report also identifies barriers to implementation of these technologies and suggests policies to achieve the desired reductions. Several scenarios are promising, but strong, and effective policies such as research and development, subsidies, energy taxes, or regulations will be necessary to overcome barriers, such as cost and consumer choice.

Download or read book Evaluating Life Cycle Assessment LCA Models for Use in a Low Carbon Fuel Standard Policy written by Ethan Scott Warner and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Gaseous Carbon Waste Streams Utilization written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2019-02-22 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the quest to mitigate the buildup of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere, researchers and policymakers have increasingly turned their attention to techniques for capturing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, either from the locations where they are emitted or directly from the atmosphere. Once captured, these gases can be stored or put to use. While both carbon storage and carbon utilization have costs, utilization offers the opportunity to recover some of the cost and even generate economic value. While current carbon utilization projects operate at a relatively small scale, some estimates suggest the market for waste carbon-derived products could grow to hundreds of billions of dollars within a few decades, utilizing several thousand teragrams of waste carbon gases per year. Gaseous Carbon Waste Streams Utilization: Status and Research Needs assesses research and development needs relevant to understanding and improving the commercial viability of waste carbon utilization technologies and defines a research agenda to address key challenges. The report is intended to help inform decision making surrounding the development and deployment of waste carbon utilization technologies under a variety of circumstances, whether motivated by a goal to improve processes for making carbon-based products, to generate revenue, or to achieve environmental goals.

Download or read book Full Fuel Cycle Assessment written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: