New report: transition to renewable gasoline unlikely

Although it is possible to produce fully renewable gasoline, it is unlikely that production will be scaled up significantly. At the same time, a new report from IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute suggests that in 2040, over a million gasoline cars will still be on the road in Sweden.

In practice, climate targets require that fossil gasoline be phased out, but new gasoline cars continue to be sold and will be around for a long time. This creates a gap between political ambitions and market developments, says Tobias Gustavsson Binder, climate analyst at IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute.

The report analyzes several possible ways to reduce the climate impact of gasoline and, in the long term, completely replace fossil gasoline. The analysis covers both technical possibilities and market conditions for scaling up these solutions.

You can produce both bio-gasoline and e-gasoline, which would be the equivalent of HVO for diesel, but that doesn’t mean it will happen on any significant scale. On the contrary, we see major market-related and technical barriers to establishing new technologies specifically for renewable gasoline.

In the short and medium terms, the report suggests that the most realistic way to reduce the climate impact of gasoline is to increase the use of existing components, primarily ethanol and bio-naphtha. However, the report shows that such solutions are not sufficient to completely replace fossil gasoline in the long term.

At present, the focus should be on gradually increasing the low-level blending of renewable gasoline components, for example by raising the reduction mandate. However, a large-scale transition to fully renewable gasoline is simply not realistic, says Gustavsson Binder.

. The report also analyses other solutions to the climate impact of gasoline cars, such as the adaptation and use of the E85 ethanol fuel. But here too, the report highlights challenges.

Consequently, electrification plays a crucial role in reducing the need for fossil gasoline in the long term.

The scale of the gasoline problem depends ultimately on how many gasoline cars remain on the road in the future. The faster electrification progresses, the less we will have to rely on alternatives to fossil gasoline,” says Gustavsson Binder.

Download the report External link, opens in new window.

For more information, contact:
Tobias Gustavsson Binder, tobias.gustavsson.binder@ivl.se, tel. +46 (0)10-788 67 50

The report was commissioned by the Swedish Transport Administration and is based on literature reviews and interviews with stakeholders in the fuel and automotive value chain.