______________________________________________________________________________________________ Carbon Sourcing
without environmental harm due to the biofuel land use issues, and that PtL is essential to achieving volume without the same land conversion.
But concerns soon emerged about circularity in terms of the source of CO 2
. If PtL fuels reuse fossil-derived CO 2 from industrial emitters( or mineral-derived in the case of cement), that carbon will still end up in the atmosphere. It is not circular; some carbon has been used twice but it has still been dug up and released, and the emissions reduction potential is capped. It is lower carbon but not carbon neutral. Some argue this gives emitters an excuse to delay the closure of polluting facilities.
Unpacking Europe’ s new rules
In response, the EU now requires that, from 2041, PtL fuels must use CO 2 captured from biogenic sources. While well intentioned, this policy risks taking PtL back into the very debates about land use and biomass supply that it sought to transcend. While all biogenic carbon is‘ circular’ or theoretically‘ carbon neutral’ in that it recently derives from the air and then returns to it on combustion, once land use is considered, these claims quickly fall down and you realize that no biofuel is a perfect zero emission fuel.
No developer wants to invest in a CO 2 source that will become ineligible. Hence the result is that PtL projects in the EU, and
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