A quarter of the CO2 emissions in the world originate from transport, especially by road. Cars with a combustion engine powered by fossil fuels are the biggest cause of this pollution.
According to the International Energy Agency, renewable fuels will be key when it comes to decarbonizing economies and reaching the goal set by the UN of zero CO2 emissions by 2050. And, despite the progress of electrification, it is estimated that two thirds of final energy consumption in 2040 will still come from non-electric sources.
Carlos TarrÃo de la Rosa, engineer and director of New Technologies at Ingenostrum, points out that “in non-heavy transport, the optimal and most efficient solution would be, by far, the battery electric car.”
For his part, Xavier Querol, geochemist and research professor at the Institute for Environmental Diagnosis and Water Studies (IDAEA-CSIC), believes that “we need to replace combustion vehicles as soon as possible and make a rapid transition to renewable energy. Although the expansion of electric cars is an indispensable piece in reducing emissions, it alone cannot solve this serious problemâ€.
For this reason, Querol is in favor of “a coexistence between the different energy sources in road traffic”, although he defends that the most important measure to curb emissions is “a more powerful metropolitan public transport, to reduce the number of vehicles that they circulate in urban environments, where they generate more emissionsâ€.
Among this new generation of fossil or low-emission fuels are synthetic fuels of renewable origin known as e-fuels -which are obtained from an industrial process of chemical transformation from hydrogen and CO2-, and biofuels -such as biogas or HVO, made from vegetable oils, animal fats, biomass and organic waste of different types.
According to Carlos TarrÃo, “the new fuels and energy vectors that will play a relevant role in the energy transition make up a very wide range that presents different advantages depending on the sector of application”.
However, biofuels have been in our lives for years: the conventional fuels that we refuel at service stations already contain them in proportions of between 5 and 10%.
Currently, the production of what is known as first generation biofuels (which come from agricultural crops) is being limited, due to the impact they generate on the change in land use, and the emissions associated with this effect. In addition, they enter into competition with food production. On the other hand, advanced biofuels (from organic waste, biomass and algae) have room for development, since their production costs are lower than hydrogen and its derivatives, and they do not pose ethical problems.
On the other hand, TarrÃo underlines that “recently there has been a strong commitment to synthetic fuels, which could partially replace their fossil equivalents” and adds that “heavy transport is a segment for which synthetic fuels are of great interest due, above all, to the greater autonomy they achieve compared to the electrification options with batteries, or the shorter reporting times”.
