Toward a Global Low Carbon Fuel Standard for Road Transport
A new policy instrument, known as a low carbon fuel standard (LCFS), is a promising approach to decarbonize transportation fuels. An LCFS has several important features: it applies a life cycle carbon intensity standard, incorporates market mechanisms by
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Abstract A new policy instrument, known as a low carbon fuel standard (LCFS), is a promising approach to decarbonize transportation fuels. An LCFS has several important features: it applies a life cycle carbon intensity standard, incorporates market mechanisms by allowing credit trading, and targets all transport fuels. A harmonized international framework is needed that builds on newly enacted LCFS policies adopted in California and the European Union. Keywords Performance standard fuels
Life cycle emissions Biofuels Alternative
1 Introduction Vehicles, planes, and ships remain almost entirely dependent on petroleum and account for almost one-fourth of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the world. A central strategy to reduce GHG emissions, as well as to reduce oil use, is to decarbonize transport fuels. No country other than Brazil has been successful at replacing petroleum fuels in the transport sector. Many countries, especially the US, have jumped from one alternative fuel to another. The fuels du jour in the 1980s and 1990s were coal liquids, methanol, compressed natural gas, and electricity for battery vehicles. Early in this decade it was hydrogen, followed by corn ethanol, and now electricity for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. The fuel du jour
D. Sperling (&) S. Yeh Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, 2028 Academic Surge Building, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA e-mail: [email protected]
O. Inderwildi and Sir David King (eds.), Energy, Transport, & the Environment, DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4471-2717-8_16, Ó Springer-Verlag London 2012
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phenomenon has much to do with oil market failures, overblown promises, the power of incumbents, and the short attention spans of governments, the mass media, and the public [10]. The ad hoc approach of the past needs to be replaced by durable policies that do not depend on government picking winners. A new approach is needed that would ideally be fuel neutral, performance-based, and harness market forces. Such an approach has emerged in Europe and the United States. It is furthest along in California, where it was adopted on April 23, 2009.
1.1 Greenhouse Gas Performance Standard for Low Carbon Fuels The California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) is imposed on all transport fuel providers, including refiners, blenders, producers, and importers. Aviation and certain maritime fuels are excluded either because the state does not have authority over them, or because including them presents logistical challenges. California’s LCFS requires a 10% reduction in the greenhouse gas intensity of transport fuels by 2020. The LCFS metric is total carbon and other greenhouse gases emitted per unit of fuel energy. The standard captures all GHGs emitted in the life cycle, from extraction, cultivation, land use conversion, processing, transport and distribution, and fuel use. Although upstream emissions account for only about 20% of total GHG emissions from petroleum, they represent almost the total life
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