Current Methods for Life-Cycle Analyses of Low-Carbon Transportation Fuels in the United States (2022) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix A: Conclusions and Recommendations
Appendix A: Conclusions and Recommendations
Pages 203-214
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From page 203... ...
Increased use of a fuel with a low carbon intensity, as defined in an LCFS, could potentially decrease or increase carbon emissions relative to the baseline, depending on policy design and other factors. Regulatory impact assessments that use CLCA to project the consequences of policy can help assess the extent to which a given policy design with particular carbon intensity estimates will result in reduced GHG emissions.
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From page 204... ...
. Conclusion 5-5: Since satellite data allow for monitoring of international land use change, it would be possible to use satellite data to monitor international land use change, support calculations of LUC impacts, and support results from economic models used to estimate international land use change GHG emissions.
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Conclusion 6-9: Ignoring vs. including vehicle production emissions in an LCA could affect its conclusion about which transportation fuels have the lowest carbon emission implications per unit of transportation services delivered.
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Conclusion 8-7: There are some variations in the life-cycle emissions attributable to alternative aviation fuels at facilities for some fuel pathways, depending on whether they are configured to maximize alternative aviation fuel output or to maximize yields of other co-products, such as middle distillates. Conclusion 8-8: Estimating the life-cycle GHG emissions of very low sulfur fuel oil will depend upon information about individual refinery choices in meeting marine fuel sulfur requirements.
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From page 207... ...
Conclusion 10-3: CLCA for future PEV loads is inherently uncertain, as is any term related to the future, given unknown future conditions that affect consequential emissions, including feedstock prices, regulations, non-vehicle load, and other factors. Conclusion 10-5: Transportation fuel policies can have co-benefits and tradeoffs in terms of near-term human health effects, climate impacts and other factors.
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From page 208... ...
Recommendation 3-4: Research programs should be created to advance key theoretical, computational, and modeling needs in LCA, especially as it pertains to the evaluation of transportation fuels. Research needs include: Further development of robust methods to evaluate the GHG emissions from development and adoption of low-carbon transportation fuels, and development or integration of process-based, economic input-output, hybrid, and CLCA methodologies Products could include the following: o development of national, open-source, transparent CLCA models for use in LCFS development and assessment o continued development of national, open-source ALCA models from new or existing models o evaluation of different approaches to creating, using, or combining ALCA, CLCA, and verification for evaluation of policy outcomes o quantification of variation between marginal and average GHG emissions for various feedstock-to-fuel pathways; and o quantification and characterization of the implications of approximations and proxies in LCA, such as comparisons of marginal and average emissions.
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From page 209... ...
Recommendation 4-7: ALCA studies used to inform fuel policy should justify the approach used to handle co-products, and as necessary report sensitivity of results to variation in approaches to assigning emissions to co-products. Recommendation 4-8: LCA studies used to inform transportation policy regarding processes that do not yet exist at scale should explicitly report sensitivity of findings to uncertainty, in order to produce bounding estimates.
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From page 210... ...
Recommendation 6-4: Research should be conducted to collect existing soil organic carbon data from public and private partners in an open source database, standardize methods of data reporting, and identify highest priority areas for soil organic carbon monitoring. These efforts could align with the recommendations made in the 2019 National Academies report on negative emissions technologies t to study soil carbon dynamics at depth, to develop a national on-farm monitoring system, to develop a model-data platform for soil organic carbon modeling, and to develop an agricultural systems field experiment network.
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Recommendation 6-14: For regulatory impact assessment, LCA of transportation fuels and transportation fuel policy should consider a range of estimates for possible changes in the emissions of vehicle production required to convert transportation fuels into transportation services, and the resulting changes in vehicle fleet composition. Recommendation 6-15: LCA comparing transportation fuels for weight-constrained applications should present a per-ton-mile functional unit and/or explicitly model the logistical implications of payload effects by fuel type.
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From page 212... ...
The comparative LCA of these technologies should use functional units based on the transportation service provided or otherwise be based on comparison of consistent transportation services. Recommendation 8-3: Alternative aviation fuel LCA estimates developed for fuel policy should reflect existing practices at facilities or the expected behavior in response to future policies.
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ELECTRICITY AS A VEHICLE FUEL Recommendation 10-1: Regulatory impact assessment or other analyses estimating the emissions implications of a change in PEV charging load should use a CLCA approach to estimate the implications of power grid emissions and clearly characterize uncertainty of estimates due to assumptions, especially for future scenarios. Recommendation 10-2: Research should be conducted to estimate how upstream emissions in the power sector change in response to changes in generation.
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From page 214... ...
Recommendation 10-6: Methods for LCAs of low-carbon transportation fuels can evaluate co-benefits and tradeoffs of transportation policies in terms of climate impact, human health, and other factors. Recommendation 10-7: Continuing and improved data are needed to support evaluation of the GHG emissions of electricity used as a transportation fuel.
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