128 Life Cycle Energy and Greenhouse Gas Assessment of Conventional and Alternative Fuel Options for Automobiles in China Available to Purchase

Rapid growth of road vehicles, private passenger cars in particular, has resulted in continuing growth in China's oil demand and imports, which has been widely accepted as a major factor effecting future oil availability and prices, and a major contributor to China's greenhouse gas (GHG) emission increase. Conventional gasoline (CG) is currently the only dominant fuel for automobiles in China. China has been promoting conventional diesel (CD), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), compressed natural gas (CNG) and 10% bioethanol: 90% CG blend (E10) as alternatives to CG in the last decade. 20% biodiesel : 80% CD blend (B20) is likely to be introduced soon according to the government's renewable energy planning. However, impacts of these different fuel options need to be carefully assessed, especially from a life cycle perspective. In the present study, an assessment of automobiles powered by internal combustion engines from a life cycle perspective is conducted to evaluate and compare the fossil fuel use, petroleum use and GHG emissions for different fuel options in China. The life cycle stages considered cover the whole vehicle cycle from material production to disposal and the whole fuel cycle from feedstock recovery to fuel use. Fuel options assessed include CG, CD, LPG, CNG, E10 with ethanol produced from wheat, corn, cassava and sugarcane, and B20 with biodiesel produced from rapeseed and soybean. The main conclusions include that CD, LPG, and B20 are promising choices as they offer significant reduction potentials in terms of cycle fossil fuel use, petroleum use and GHG emissions compared with CG and that E10 can only offer very limited reduction potentials in terms of fossil fuel and GHG emissions.