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The Carbon Trust believes that energy from sustainable sources of biomass could play a major role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from transport. However, many “first generation” biofuel supply chains offer only limited reduction in GHG emissions and their adoption has been driven by other factors. We believe it is essential to consider any new bioenergy value chain from a whole-system GHG emission perspective. There are a number of prospective, more advanced technologies that have the potential to deliver sustainable, low-carbon biofuels. These technologies are likely to be expensive and challenging to develop, therefore the Carbon Trust is launching a compound Research Accelerator to hasten their arrival to the market. We believe that the UK can compete on the world stage in this arena, but will need to attract world-class researchers with latent capability not currently working in the bioenergy area.
Strand A:
Pyrolysis oil could be used to produce low-cost, liquid fuels with a low whole-system carbon emission footprint, if they could be integrated into a conventional refinery. However, the properties of the pyrolysis oil produced from current fast pyrolysis processes are unsuitable for direct integration. The objective of Strand A is to produce a pyrolysis oil with the properties required for integration through either:
a) modifying the pyrolysis process to produce a better quality oil directly, or
b) upgrading the oil before or at the refinery.
To achieve this we have launched The Pyrolysis Challenge, with the aim of building innovative partnerships between leading academic groups, high technology SMEs and industrial companies. Our analysis indicates that the UK has the capability to take the lead in this technology, provided that we can successfully create and align multi-disciplinary teams and leverage some of the latent capability in relevant related disciplines.
We called for Expressions of Interest in spring 2008 and received 24 bids; of these we progressed four consortia to full proposal stage. We have now entered into commercial negotiation and technical due diligence with the preferred bidders.
Strand B:
Microalgae can be cultivated to produce high yields of oil that can be used as a feedstock for further refining into a transport oil. The potential biomass yield of microalgae is vast compared to conventional agricultural biofuel feedstocks and it has few of their negative impacts (it does not require arable land or freshwater and does not compete with commodity food crops). However, many challenges remain to develop low-cost microalgae biofuel production systems at scale. Our analysis indicates that the UK has the capability and appetite to take the lead in critical aspects of this technology, provided that that we can successfully create and align multi-disciplinary research and development teams.
We launched the Algae Biofuels Challenge (ABC) in October and closed the call for expressions of interest in December 2008. Further information can be found on the ABC web page here. The objective of this programme will be to de-risk commercial investment into algae biofuels production via a coordinated and focused programme of research and development.
Strand C:
Novel biofuels have the potential to provide alternatives to existing biofuels that are superior in terms of, for example, lifecycle green house gas emissions, energy content, engine performance, and existing infrastructure compatibility. We have commissioned studies into the various novel biofuels options that exist and the capacity of the UK to develop them given the progress being made internationally. At present, our findings are inconclusive and we have further work to do to assess the UK’s role in this technology area. We expect to progress this work later this year and in early 2009.
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