Analysis of the Availability of Sustainable, Biogenic Gasoline in Europe

In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in road traffic, different technologies can be considered. Besides electrification, alternative fuels offer the possibility to reduce the climate impact of vehicles using combustion engines. Thereby, they can be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the existing car fleet. By using biomass as raw material, biofuels offer the possibility to create a closed carbon cycle as the plants used for their production absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. In this paper, the potential to produce sustainable, biogenic gasoline with second generation biomass in Europe is evaluated. The considered potentials are only based on second generation biomass that is currently not used for other purposes. The biomass potentials include residual and waste materials, as well as perennial crops cultivated on unused marginal lands. With the considered biomass amounts, the potential gasoline that could be produced is calculated. Therefore, different pathways using ethanol and methanol as an intermediate product are considered. Besides the estimation of the mass potentials, a cost estimation as well as an outlook on future potentials is included in this study.