The Greenest Green Fuel, PopularScience.com

wxman

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YOU said in post #50 that aviation consumes ~13 billion gallons/year. Now you're saying it's 36 billion gallons/year. Which is it?

Do you have a source for the ~440B gallons of liquid fuel/year consumed in the U.S.? According to EIA ( https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_home#tab3 ), petroleum consumption in the U.S. is 19,631,000 barrels/day. 71% of that is for transportation. That would be ~215 billion gallons/year for transportation if my math is correct.

Potential yield from just a few waste feedstocks (used cooking oil, DME from vegetation that will be burned anyway, and renewable diesel fuel from MSW) would approach 40 billion gallons (diesel equivalent) per year. That's almost 20% just from those sources. That doesn't include the reduction in fuel consumption from diesel vehicles relative to the mostly gasoline passenger vehicle fleet in the U.S.

If EVs take up a large percentage of personal passenger vehicles, then that substantially lowers the liquid fuel demand for transportation.

I mentioned DME from biomass because it has the greatest potential reduction in GHG emissions (net uptake) of any vehicle technologies/fuel pathways currently calculated in GREET.

It doesn't need to be an either/or scenario. Biofuels can compliment electricity for transportation.
 

nwdiver

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It doesn't need to be an either/or scenario. Biofuels can compliment electricity for transportation.
Apologies I'll try to link to my sources more often. Sometimes I post quickly based on recalled numbers. My recollection was that the US consumed ~30M bbl/day of oil. ~20M appears to be the correct number.

US aviation appears to be ~21B gallons per year. ~1.4M bbl/day * 365day * 42bbl/gal.


I've never proposed NOT using biofuels. I agree we SHOULD use biofuels. My point is that we need to use it as Jet Fuel first and focus on electrifying ground transportation. Thanks to years of dithering we're WAY... WAAAAY behind in terms of sustainable energy and the costs are mounting quickly.

Biofuels are great for limited GHG reduction but they lack the ability to scale quickly which is what we desperately need. EVs also provide a grid flexibility service that enhances the ability to add more intermittent resources like wind and solar. In terms of GHG reduction biofuels are much more of a distraction than a solution.
 
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