We have a new Inside Renewable Series video, and although this one is longer than usual, it is also one you don’t want to miss!
We have been looking into the question: is there a zero-mission vehicle? And guess what? No!
Based on a life-cycle approach – taking into account the emissions emitted during the production and recycling of the car, the production of the battery or the fuel cells, and the emissions released during the production of the energy –no single technology can be labelled zero-emissions.
In the video below Alain Mathuren, FuelsEurope Communication Director, demonstrates this with the support of the publicly available Concawe CO2 Cars Comparator tool. This tool – using third-party publicly available and verified data – allows you to design several scenarios combining different parameters and compare the environmental performance of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric engine technologies.
In the video, Alain uses Belgium and Germany’s data for CO2 intensity of electricity production for comparison, but you can easily modify the parameters to adjust to your own choices or country. The bottom line is, that a zero-emission vehicle is not a reality. But you know what is a reality? Having different technologies available such as renewable fuels, hybrids, electric that can collectively help you reduce your emissions immediately.
Try the tool: https://www.carsco2comparator.eu/
Our last episode on the LCA will come next week! Stay tuned.
#CleanFuelsforAll
Welcome back in our Series in start renewable fuels you’ll remember from our two previous episodes that we firstly touched on what is a life cycle approach and then we also looked into what are zero emission Vehicles do these really exist let us now look at a online tool a
Car CO2 comparator developed by cona to see what are what is the reality of the numbers come with me this online tool Compares three different Power trads before we go into details every number every Source every data is mentioned click on those eyes which mean information and you will be
Able to have all the explanation around it the tool gives you default values these can all be changed you have a number of options for the batteries you have a number of for the battery production you have a number of options for the charging intervals and for the
Options for for the fuels just change them as you want it’s your choice we have gone for the same battery size for the two hybrid options a hybrid and a plug-in hybrid and we have decided to go for a 60 KW hour for the battery electric which is an affordable vehicle
Versus Range which are usually much more expensive we then have for the battery production have default values 120 You can disagree believe it’s higher or you can disagree and think this is now becoming lower so let’s stick to 70 which is likely to be a number for
Europe in the short term we also have chosen 150,000 kilm total lifetime mileage for the vehicle you have other options you can decide in terms of recharge interval this is important for the plug-in hybrid the more you charge a car the more you use the battery a daily
Recharge means a daily use of the battery we less use one in terms of mileage we take the average in terms of climate we are in a temperate country here in Brussels let’s stick to those default options now comes the interesting part the energy and we start
With the electricity we have a number of 335 G of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour that is the European average official numbers from the European commission for 2019 have they changed we are four years later slightly let’s go now individually for countries in Belgium today you would have something
Around 120 150 on a life cycle we will go for 150 for the life cycle which is below the official number for 2019 and then we will look into the fuel options that we will take we will take a bio option HBO we will take a knee Diesel and a knee gasoline both
Synthetic fuels go back to our previous videos to know more about those fuel options what are the results here we can see that we have a performance for the battery electric vehicle of 98 G of CO2 per kilometer for the plug-in hybrid 77 for the diesel 76 for the gasoline and
94 for the biobased HBO finally the hybrid vehicle performs best because it doesn’t depend on the electricity from the grid and it is 67 for the E diesel 63 for the E gasoline and 105 for the hvo the production of the hvo requires a little bit more energy let’s now go to
Another country which has a higher electricity CO2 intensity and that is for instance Germany where we do have coal it’s not the only country in Europe but it will show you some very interesting elements you cannot ignore the role of the energy in the CO2 performance of a vehicle Germany today
Is around 450 G of CO2 for the electricity production what does this tell me Well an EV in Germany is 171 gr of CO2 if we look into the plug-in hybrid we’re at 132 for the diesel 131 for the gasoline and 149 for the HBO finally the hybrid vehicle not using the
Electricity from the grid keeps the same numbers whatever the intensity of the electricity 67 63 105 what does this tell me hybrid vehicles with a carbon intense electricity grid are the best option the lowest numbers to reduce the intensity of Transport the EV is extremely dependent on the energy produced and the
Hybrid little bit better than the EV but still dependent let’s now go into the ideal world we are at the lowest number for our battery production 30 kilg of CO2 per kilowatt hour and we are going to almost zero because the zero doesn’t exist I repeat that let’s go to
15 what does it tell me now 47 G of CO2 for the electric vehicle so zero emission no way we go to the plug-in hybrid 49 G for E diesel 47 for E gasoline and 65 for the HBO and here given that we have a decarbonated grid
The hybrid vehicle will perform a little bit less good as the two others 64 for E diesel 60 for E gasoline and 102 for the HBO so basically all those Technologies can collectively contribute to our overall objective of reducing emissions in transport zero emission don’t exist
We do have and we have to take those in consideration we do have emissions at every stage of the use of the vehicle from its production until it’s recycling this raises the question of the way emissions are measured for vehicles at the tailpipe only we should consider all
Emissions at every stage of the vehicle stay tuned for the next episode