Biofuels for Road Transport

Book excerpt: “Biofuels for Road Transport: A Seed to Wheel Perspective” provides a review of the history, the current status and perspectives for biofuels used in road transport, across the full ‘seed-to-wheel’ life cycle of these fuels. Successive chapters cover the history of biofuels; the first- and second-generation liquid fuels and biofuels for powering electric vehicles; fossil fuel replacement, land requirement, greenhouse gas balances and environmental burdens of ethanol, esters derived from fatty acids (‘biodiesel’), Fischer-Tropsch diesel and HTU diesel; competing technologies (fossil fuels, increases in energy-efficiency and photovoltaic power) and how they compare to biofuels; and the perspectives for biofuels. Cost, availability, technological development, competition with biomass for food and for soil organic carbon and environmental perspectives are also discussed.