Minimising carbon emissions and energy expended for the New Zealand transport sector through to 2050

Carbon Emissions Pinch Analysis (CEPA) and Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROI) analysis are combined to investigate the feasibility of New Zealand (NZ) reaching a 1990 emission levels for transport in 2050. The transportation sector traditionally has been a difficult area to transition to high levels of renewable energy because of the strong dependency on fossil fuels. Multiple scenarios for reducing transport emissions are analysed. With NZ’s unique mix of renewable energy resources the analysis demonstrates that NZ is in a very good position to sustainably meet their future transport needs provided substantial commitment is made to transition light vehicle fleet to hybrid vehicles, plug-in hybrids vehicles and electric vehicles by 2050. Electrification of rail within and between major centres will also require major political commitment. The resulting increase in electricity demand for transport is 3.6 TWh (or 4.8 % of electricity generation in NZ). We show the minimum amount of biofuel renewable production to achieve the goal of 1990 emissions level in 2050 is 46 PJ. Delivering 46 PJ is expected to be well within the potential biofuel production capacity of NZ. The delivery of economically competitive renewable liquid biofuels will also require close cooperation and system integration with other energy systems like the electricity sector and industrial process heat sector.

[1]  Charles A. S. Hall,et al.  EROI of different fuels and the implications for society , 2014 .

[2]  Troy R. Hawkins,et al.  Comparative Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Conventional and Electric Vehicles , 2013 .

[3]  Charles A. S. Hall,et al.  Year in review—EROI or energy return on (energy) invested , 2010, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[4]  C. Hall,et al.  Energy and Resource Quality: The Ecology of the Economic Process , 1992 .

[5]  Dominic A. Notter,et al.  Contribution of Li-ion batteries to the environmental impact of electric vehicles. , 2010, Environmental science & technology.

[6]  Martin John Atkins,et al.  CARBON EMISSIONS PINCH ANALYSIS (CEPA) FOR EMISSIONS REDUCTION IN THE NEW ZEALAND ELECTRICITY SECTOR , 2010 .

[7]  Michael Taylor.  Alternative Liquid Fuels : Global Availability , Economics and Environmental Impacts March 2007 , 2007 .

[8]  Santanu Bandyopadhyay,et al.  Emission constrained power system planning: a pinch analysis based study of Indian electricity sector , 2013, Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy.

[9]  Ajay K. Gupta,et al.  A Review of the Past and Current State of EROI Data , 2011 .

[10]  Stacy Cagle Davis,et al.  Transportation energy data book , 2008 .

[11]  Raymond R. Tan,et al.  Targeting for carbon sequestration retrofit planning in the power generation sector for multi-period problems , 2014 .

[12]  Anders Hammer Strømman,et al.  Life cycle environmental assessment of lithium-ion and nickel metal hydride batteries for plug-in hybrid and battery electric vehicles. , 2011, Environmental science & technology.

[13]  D. J. Murphy,et al.  The implications of the declining energy return on investment of oil production , 2014, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[14]  Raymond R. Tan,et al.  Power system planning with emission constraints: Effects of CCS retrofitting , 2014 .

[15]  B. Möller,et al.  The design of Smart Energy Systems for 100% renewable energy and transport solutions , 2013 .

[16]  Cheng-Liang Chen,et al.  A unified model for the deployment of carbon capture and storage , 2014 .

[17]  Martin John Atkins,et al.  Minimising carbon emissions and energy expended for electricity generation in New Zealand through to 2050 , 2014 .

[18]  Charles A. S. Hall,et al.  What is the Minimum EROI that a Sustainable Society Must Have , 2009 .

[19]  Denny K. S. Ng,et al.  Carbon Constrained Energy Planning (CCEP) for Sustainable Power Generation Sector with Automated Targeting Model , 2013 .

[20]  Dominic C.Y. Foo,et al.  Pinch analysis approach to carbon-constrained energy sector planning , 2007 .

[21]  Toshko Zhelev,et al.  Emissions targeting and planning: An application of CO2 emissions pinch analysis (CEPA) to the Irish electricity generation sector , 2008 .

[22]  Daniel Weißbach,et al.  Energy intensities, EROIs (energy returned on invested), and energy payback times of electricity generating power plants , 2013 .