Sourcing suitable CO₂ feedstock for Europe’s growing e-fuels sector is likely to face challenges in the future without the right investment, a new report by Transport & Environment (T&E) has suggested.
Produced from renewable electricity, water and captured CO₂, e-fuels are seen as a key means of decarbonising hard-to-abate industries, including aviation and shipping, with recent initiatives such as the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) III, ReFuel EU Aviation, and FuelEU Maritime seeing to accelerate the deployment of e-fuels across Europe.
Biogenic CO₂ streams
However, certain constraints may hamper the future growth of the industry, T&E noted – after 2036 or 2041, depending on the pathway, the use of e-fuels from fossil sources will be ineligible, prompting greater focus on biogenic CO₂ streams.
‘However, EU supplies of biogenic CO2 are limited, and low-cost electricity supply is not always co-located with biogenic CO2 sources,’ T&E noted.
On a sector by sector basis, pulp and paper plants, biomass power stations, energy-from-waste facilities, ethanol production and biogas upgrading are likely to offer the most promising sources of biogenic CO₂ – offering significant volumes as well as low-to-moderate capture costs.
Transport infrastructure
The study examines future means of transporting CO₂ to production sites, which is likely to involve a mix of pipelines, rail and trucking – pipelines for short distances, rail over longer routes, and trucking for aggregation of CO2 from small sources. However, as it notes, infrastructure development may face regulatory barriers, necessitating coordinated action by EU institutions and member states
It also identifies a ‘large potential synergy’ between CO₂ sourcing for e-fuels and the transport infrastructure being developed for carbon capture and storage (CCS), with large-scale pipeline corridors planned across Europe to transport CO₂ to geological storage in the North Sea.
‘This overall suggests there is a significant opportunity for CCS-focused networks in Europe to assist the transport of biogenic CO2 for e-fuels,’ T&E noted.
The report argues that EU policy should explicitly enable CO₂ networks to provide CO₂ for utilisation, not only storage, with the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) initiative currently primarily restricted to CCS projects.
‘Expanding the scope of projects eligible for funding under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) to those allowing utilisation could help to unlock further e-fuels production,’ T&E noted. ‘It could also help to provide e-fuels developers with flexibility in CO2 sourcing, and provide wider synergies to the CO2 network’. Read more here.
