Life Cycle Assessment of Biofuels

ESU-services Ltd. has been founded in 1998. Its core objectives are research, consulting, review and training in the fields of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in the sectors energy, basic minerals, materials, food and lifestyles and of Substance Flow Analysis (SFA).

They have published case studies about the life cycle impact of biomass energy systems:

• Life cycle based approaches for the assessment of innovative energy technologies by Frischknecht R.
• Life Cycle Assessment of Agrofuels: Summary of different case studies and conclusions for private mobility by Niels Jungbluth
• Life Cycle Assessment of Different Pathways of BtL-Fuels from Wood, Straw and Miscanthus by N. Jungbluth

How far can a person get with fuel from 0.5 ha (a soccer field)?

• Depending on the car: 5’000 – 30’000 km per soccer field
• By bicycle and food: 12’500 km (veal), 65‘000 km (wine), 400‘000 km (wheat), 600’000 km (potatoes)

Ecoinvent Database

The ecoinvent database offered by ESU Services contains life cycle inventory data of energy (electricity, oil, coal, natural gas, biomass, biofuels, bioenergy, hydro power, nuclear power, photovoltaics, wind power, biogas), materials (chemicals, metals, minerals, plastics, paper, biomass, biomaterials), waste management (incineration, landfill, waste water treatment), transports (road, rail, air, ship), agricultural products and processes, electronics, metals processing, and building ventilation.

There is no such thing as a Sustainable Biofuel

"Even capitalists now admit the oil crisis is real. But their solutions border on lunacy as they avoid the obvious answer" - based on an article in The Guardian by George Monbiot

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Many people believe that by making biofuels not from the crops themselves but from crop wastes - if transport fuel can be manufactured from straw or grass or wood chips, there are no implications for land use, and no danger of spreading hunger.

Unfortunately most agricultural "waste" is nothing of the kind. It is the organic material that maintains the soil's structure, nutrients and store of carbon. A paper commissioned by the US government proposes that, to help meet its biofuel targets, 75% of annual crop residues should be harvested. According to a letter published in Science last year, removing crop residues can increase the rate of soil erosion a hundredfold. Our addiction to the car, in other words, could lead to peak soil as well as peak oil.

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All these convoluted solutions are designed to avoid a simpler one: reducing the consumption of transport fuel. But that requires the use of a different commodity. Global supplies of political courage appear, unfortunately, to have peaked some time ago.

Next Geneation Biofuels in the News

A Biofuel Process to Replace All Fossil Fuels
A startup unveils a high-yield process for making fuel from carbon dioxide and sunlight.

A startup based in Cambridge, MA--Joule Biotechnologies--today revealed details of a process that it says can make 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year. If this yield proves realistic, it could make it practical to replace all fossil fuels used for transportation with biofuels. The company also claims that the fuel can be sold for prices competitive with fossil fuels.

Big Oil Turns to Algae
ExxonMobil invests $300 million in Synthetic Genomics to develop algae biofuel.

ExxonMobil announced a commitment to invest $300 million over five to six years in Synthetic Genomics, which Craig Venter founded and now leads as CEO, and to spend an additional $300 million on a complementary internal algae program.

The push is to take advantage of algae's ability to efficiently transform sunlight into lipids that can be relatively easily converted into diesel, gasoline, and possibly even advanced hydrocarbons used to manufacture plastics, chemicals, and other products.

Dow to Test Algae Ethanol
Startup Algenol partners with Dow Chemical on a demonstration ethanol plant.

Florida startup Algenol Biofuels says that it can efficiently produce commercial quantities of ethanol directly from algae without the need for fresh water or agricultural lands--a novel approach that has captured the interest and backing of Dow Chemical, the chemical giant based in Midland, MI.

The companies announced plans to build and operate a demonstration plant on 24 acres of property. It will consist of 3,100 horizontal bioreactors, each about 5 feet wide and 50 feet long and capable of holding 4,000 liters.