Gasification-based biofuels – Greenhouse gas emissions and profitability analysis with general and sector-specific policy instruments

About the project

Gasification-based biofuel production systems have a large potential to contribute to climate change mitigation in the transport sector. The commercial feasibility of renewable energy technol­ogies is affected by fossil fuel prices, the price of biomass and policy instruments, for example a cost for carbon dioxide equivalents (CO_2e).

The aim of this project has been to analyze and quantify the level of a sector specific greenhouse gas (GHG) emission cost (per CO_2e) in transport required for making gasification-based biofuel pro­duction systems profitable under different future energy market scenarios. The analysis of the gasification-based systems builds upon the earlier work by the project participants and includes production systems of synthetic natural gas (SNG), methanol and Fischer-Tropsch fuels. The future energy market scenarios are based on the fossil fuel prices in the ”New Policy Scenario” and ”450 ppmv Scenario” presented in World Energy Outlook 2016. The project analysis also includes a comparison of the profitability and GHG emission re­duction potential from the gasification-based systems to systems where the same amount of bio­mass is used in conventional conversion technologies to produce electricity and where the electrici­ty is used in battery electric vehicles.

The results show that the level of the sector specific CO_2e cost required to make the gasification-based systems profitable is not higher than the current level of CO₂ tax in Swedish transport sector. Also, the results show that the systems where the biomass is used for electricity production and in BEV have higher profitability than the gasification-based systems. However, the electricity-based systems have a stronger dependency on heat sinks and a high price for delivered heat.