Andrew Simpson of ITEE at the University of Queensland, Australia, is completing his PhD on future alternative fuels. On 6th November 2003 he gave a seminar summarising his findings.
His aim was to research the various possibilities with Australia in mind (we have slightly different accessibilities to certain feedstocks, for example), and to compare the alternatives fairly (e.g. with the same base vehicle, range, performance, etc). He performed a complete Well To Wheels (WTW) comparison.
His findings are (from slide 27):
- Direct utilisation of fuels is best, avoiding unnecessary energy conversion steps
- Coal pathways have extremely high WTW energy and GHGs!
- Biofuels have large embodied energy and therefore may not be a practical choice for reducing greenhouse emissions from transport.
- Hydrogen fuel suffers a major disadvantage because of point 1.
- Natural gas seems to be a promising transitional energy feedstock for automotive fuels, based on its versatility in use and low WTW energy and GHGs.
- BEVs are by far the most efficient powertrain technology and provide the lowest WTW energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for a given feedstock
A pdf of his presentation can be found on the SERG publications page.
You may also care to browse the rest of the Sustainable Energy Research Group (SERG) webpages.