Grow your own – options to electrification
Back from a week off on a ‘staycation’ in the UK having cancelled a planned trip to the Algarve due to the ongoing pandemic restrictions. As one of the news stories whilst we were away was the possibility that a local music festival had potentially been a ‘super-spreader’ event, I’m not sure that we made the right choice simply on those grounds. Whilst stuck in multi-mile long congestion on the way down last Saturday, I also wondered what the net carbon effect was of thousands of cars crawling down the motorway compared to a few A320s on short haul flights…
Our trip also coincided more or less with the switchover in the UK from E5 ethanol petrol to E10, bringing us in line with a number of other European markets with a 10% ethanol content. The roll-out appears to be inconsistent with some filling stations still on E5, and others having only E10, even on super unleaded – which is a concern for me in respect of my classic car. In contrast to the European situation, Brazil has had a much higher ethanol content in their petrol for years – currently 27%, and flex-fuel cars have been offered for almost twenty years, able to run on anything up to 100% ethanol. As carbon dioxide is absorbed by the crops grown as feedstock for ethanol, this partially offsets the release of carbon dioxide through the combustion process in the car. Over the whole fuel life cycle, studies suggest that greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by anything between a third and 100% compared to a conventional oil-derived fuel.
This is highly relevant when compared with pure battery electric vehicles (BEVs) which is the direction that European and other legislators seem determined to drive the industry and our customers towards. The manufacturing process for a BEV is more polluting than an ICE, and it is estimated that the breakeven point for a BEV compared to an ICE in Europe is around 50,000 km. If the electricity is generated with a low level of renewables, this breakeven point is extended. Now consider this challenge from the point of view of a country with a strong agricultural sector like Brazil or India. You have the land and the labour to produce ethanol feedstocks domestically without compromising food supply, your power generation infrastructure lags behind European markets, and there are many other deserving demands for investment, including education and healthcare. These are also markets where the demand for cars will grow, even if the evolution has been erratic at times and fallen behind the optimistic forecasts of a decade ago. However, just these two markets could still represent almost a tenth of global demand if things turn out well.
It is in that context, that some commentators are now pushing back on electrification. What is (or might be) right for Europe or China, may not be right for all markets. The manufacturers’ trade association in Brazil, ANFAVEA, published some research a couple weeks ago that offered up three scenarios at 2035 for the future powertrain choice in Brazil – one of inertia, with slow evolution in powertrain mix, one of convergence with global trends, and the third with a resolutely bio-fuelled future. The best CO2 outcome is from the biofuel option, and it is only marginally worse from a NOx perspective (a 30% improvement compared to 39% for the BEV-dependent global convergence scenario).
Other commentators are also joining the debate. A video released last week by Edurado Lunardelli Novaes, a Brazilian entrepreneur with a focus on the agricultural sector, proposes that for markets like Brazil and India, the optimal solution is a fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) which uses ethanol as the fuel, rather than hydrogen. This has the attractions of supporting the agricultural sector and leveraging developing fuel cell and EV technologies, but avoiding the costly and energy intensive process of producing hydrogen, then safely transporting and storing it. Existing filling station infrastructure can supply the ethanol that can top up a car as we do today in minutes, yet the car itself is an EV, without a large, expensive and heavy battery.
I do not know what the final outcome will be, and there are still many positive developments to come from the huge investment being poured into battery technology and BEVs. However, it also seems likely that this will not be the only powertrain option available to us in 2035, and a wise man would keep their options open, without having to drop the needed commitment to a sustainable future, for the sake of the planet and future generations.