Since 2020, Cerulogy has been working for the European Commission Directorate General for Energy, as part of a consortium led by Guidehouse, on a re-assessment of which biofuel feedstocks should be identified as high indirect land use change risk under the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive and on the development of certification guidelines for low indirect land land use change risk biofuel projects.
Since 2020, Dr Malins has been supporting the development and implementation of the greenhouse gas emissions avoidance calculation methodology of the EU Innovation Fund. The Innovation Fund is one of the world’s largest funding programmes for innovative low carbon projects, with expected funding of around €40 billion in the period 2020 to 2030. Below is a link to a recording of the Info Day for the 2023 Innovation Fund calls, where Dr Malins presented on the calculation rules for Energy Intensive Industries projects and for carbon capture and storage of utilisation.
Alternative fuels have been identified as an important tool to reduce the climate change impact of the aviation industry, but there are many challenges associated with increasing the production and use of these fuels in a sustainable way. In this series of reports for the Aviation Environment Federation we discuss issues relating to the lifecycle analysis of alternative fuels, to the use of wastes and by-products as feedstock for alternative fuels, and to the commercialisation and expansion of an alternative aviation fuel industry.
Clean fuel standards (CFSs) and low-carbon fuel standards (LCFSs) are regulations which oblige fuel suppliers to meet a gradually tightening target for the average emissions intensity of their fuels. CFSs already exist (or are under consideration) in several USA states and in Canada.
Cerulogy has developed a model for the USA’s road transport sector covering the period 2015-50 (aviation is included in later iterations). This is a flexible, user-oriented tool for building CFS scenarios covering any USA state or the country as a whole.
The ‘technical annex’ linked here introduces the model, detailing its capabilities and its underlying workings. These are demonstrated by considering a hypothetical national CFS operating from 2025, incorporating outputs from the Annual Decarbonization Perspective 2022. The illustrative scenario achieves a nominal 98% reduction in lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from road transport fuels by 2050 (including CCS credits and treating renewable electricity as zero-emissions).
BIKE is a multi-year project funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme. Its aim is to assess the market potential of the EU’s low ILUC-risk concept – from practical, regulatory, and economic standpoints. The BIKE consortium includes expertise from academia, industry, international agencies, and the private sector.
Cerulogy has a leadership role in BIKE’s policy-oriented work package. Members of this work package have produced thirteen briefing notes in collaboration with the rest of the consortium, which examine different aspects of EU biofuels-related policy. These cover issues such as the integration of biofuels policy with agro-ecological safeguards, funding provisions for novel farming techniques, the emerging framework surrounding land-based carbon removals, and the use of terminology in the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive.
The briefing notes are all available from the BIKE website.
This study for the European Federation for Transport and the Environment (T&E) reviews the use of rendered animal fats by the EU biofuel industry, the impacts of this use on other animal fat consumers and the potential for this diversion of resources to cause indirect emissions. As featured on BBC news! You can read a press release by T&E based on the study here and an associated BBC news article here.
In 2023, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) released its first annual Global Automaker Rating, assessing the readiness of car manufacturers for the transition to electric vehicles. Dr Sandford and Dr Malins supported the development of the rating by reviewing ICCT’s methodology and data collection.
Cerulogy supported the Changing Markets Foundation with the analysis of methane emissions presented in their Emissions Impossible report, highlighting the climate change impact of companies in the meat and dairy industry.
This report for the Danish Energy Agency presents an overview and review of indirect land use change modelling, and provides a discussion of options for Denmark to adjust its biofuel policy to take further account of indirect land use change emissions.
Cerulogy, 2023
