Abstract

External Speaker: Dr Calliope Panoutsou, Research Fellow at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College (www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/c.panoutsou)

Biomass value chains for energy and materials: policy, economics & logistics

The talk will provide an outline of recent policies at EU27 (and a recent assessment for the NREAP bio-targets, which countries will and which will not reach them and why), as well as a detailed analysis of economics and logistics and how they can affect the biomass integration into heat, electricity and transport sectors (which are the key cost areas).

Internal Speaker: Dr Xiaoyu Yan, PDRA Energy Group (head: Adam Boies), Dept of Engineering (www.eng.cam.ac.uk/~xy255/)

UK biofuels – friend or foe?

The uncertainty in carbon intensity of UK wheat ethanol

Biofuels are frequently cited to save the day when all other technical options combined look insufficient to bring about the desired emission reduction in the transport sector. However, numerous and often significant sources of uncertainties exist in biofuel life cycles. How confident are we in estimating the emission reduction potentials of different biofuels given these uncertainties? Using UK wheat ethanol as a case study, we illustrate the quantification of uncertainties in life cycle emissions via stochastic modelling and compare the results with those from traditional deterministic life cycle analyses.