Abstract
This is just-auto' s first report focusing on this topic of global importance, future fuels. In it we take a look at auto fuel requirements and examine the currently-available fuels for road vehicle propulsion - the gases, liquid hydrocarbons, and their alternatives - as well as their likely developments, forecasted out to 2020.
Any attempt to map the future of vehicle fuels must be centered on a set of key questions, namely:
- How much fuel will be needed for the vehicle fleet to 2020?
- How much fuel is, and will be, available to meet this need?
- How urgent is the need to counter the threat of global warming?
- What means are available to enable us to counter this threat (and by implication, also to counter the threat of crude oil exhaustion)?
- How quickly can such means be introduced?
Table of Contents
Introduction
- The inevitability of exhaustion
- ....and concern about global warming
- The key questions
Chapter 1: Present and future fuel needs
- Current patterns of fuel use
- Future fuel needs
- Fuel quality considerations
Chapter 2: Present and future vehicle fuel supplies
- Energy for mobility
- The crude oil derivatives
- Synthetic hydrocarbons
- Biofuels
- Ethanol - the present situation
- FAME - the present situation
- Biofuel production: doubts on expansion
- The gas alternatives
- LPG - the present situation
- CNG - the present situation
- Electric vehicles - the present situation
Chapter 3: Global warming - the urgency
- The challenge - real or imaginary?
- Practical timescales
- Sustainable energy: general considerations
- Meeting vehicular needs
Chapter 4: Global warming - the counter-strategies
- Future alternative fuels
- First-generation biofuels
- The alcohols
- The methyl esters
- Second-generation biofuels
- Butanol
- Second-generation biodiesel
- Biosynthetic hydrocarbons
- LNG
- Hydrogen
- Problems of storage
- Manufacture and economics
- Bio-hydrogen approaches
- Advanced vehicle technologies
- Advanced powertrain concepts
- Hybrid powertrains
- Fuel cell power units
- ‘Intelligent' traffic management
- CO2 sequestration
Chapter 5: Conclusions
- The detailed answers
- How much fuel will be needed for the vehicle fleet to 2020?
- How much fuel is, and will be, available to meet this need?
- How urgent is the need to counter the threat of global warming?
- What means are available to enable us to counter this threat (and by implication, also to counter the threat of crude oil exhaustion)?
- How quickly can such means be introduced?
- Final conclusions
List of figures
- Figure 1: Fuel production processes from feedstock to final product
- Figure 2: The carbon cycle
List of tables
- Table 1: Worldwide road vehicle fuel requirement by type, 2005-2020 (% share and m barrels per day)
- Table 2: Worldwide road vehicle fuel usage by source, 2005-2020 (% share and m barrels per day)
