Biofuels, Climate Policy and the European Vehicle Fleet

Abstract and PDF report are also available on the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change website (http://globalchange.mit.edu/).We examine the effect of biofuels mandates and climate policy on the European vehicle fleet, considering the prospects for diesel and gasoline vehicles. We use the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model, which is a general equilibrium model of the world economy. We expand this model by explicitly introducing current generation biofuels, by accounting for stock turnover of the vehicle fleets and by disaggregating gasoline and diesel cars. We find that biofuels mandates alone do not substantially change the share of diesel cars in the total fleet given the current structure of fuel taxes and tariffs in Europe that favors diesel vehicles. Jointly implemented changes in fiscal policy, however, can reverse the trend toward more diesel vehicles. We find that harmonizing fuel taxes reduces the welfare cost associated with renewable fuel policy and lowers the share of diesel vehicles in the total fleet to 21% by 2030 compared to 25% in 2010. We also find that eliminating tariffs on biofuel imports, which under the existing regime favor biodiesel and impede sugar ethanol imports, is welfare-enhancing and brings about further substantial reductions in CO2 emissions.This study received support from the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, which is funded by a consortium of government, industry and foundation sponsors

California Methanol Assessment; Volume II, Technical Report

A joint effort by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering has brought together sponsors from both the public and private sectors for an analysis of the prospects for methanol use as a fuel in California, primarily for the transportation and stationary application sectors. Increasing optimism in 1982 for a slower rise in oil prices and a more realistic understanding of the costs of methanol production have had a negative effect on methanol viability in the near term (before the year 2000). Methanol was determined to have some promise in the transportation sector, but is not forecasted for large-scale use until beyond the year 2000. Similarly, while alternative use of methanol can have a positive effect on air quality (reducing NOx, SOx, and other emissions), a best case estimate is for less than 4% reduction in peak ozone by 2000 at realistic neat methanol vehicle adoption rates. Methanol is not likely to be a viable fuel in the stationary application sector because it cannot compete economically with conventional fuels except in very limited cases. On the production end, it was determined that methanol produced from natural gas will continue to dominate supply options through the year 2000, and the present and planned industry capacity is somewhat in excess of all projected needs. Nonsubsidized coal-based methanol cannot compete with conventional feedstocks using current technology, but coal-based methanol has promise in the long term (after the year 2000), providing that industry is willing to take the technical and market risks and that government agencies will help facilitate the environment for methanol. Given that the prospects for viable major markets (stationary applications and neat fuel in passenger cars) are unlikely in the 1980s and early 1990s, the next steps for methanol are in further experimentation and research of production and utilization technologies, expanded use as an octane enhancer, and selected fleet implementation. In the view of the study, it is not advantageous at this time to establish policies within California that attempt to expand methanol use rapidly as a neat fuel for passenger cars or to induce electric utility use of methanol on a widespread basis

PROCESSING OF TRIGLYCERIDES TO DIESEL RANGE HYDROCARBON FUELS: EASILY PRACTICABLE SMALL SCALE APPROACH

Lipid fraction of biomass has been identified as carbon neutral substitution to fuels from fossil sources in the transportation sector. Although, the diesel engine, invented by Rudolph Diesel over a century ago first ran on peanut oil, the current combustion engines are designed to run on hydrocarbon fuels derived from petroleum. Therefore, a substitute for diesel fuel from renewable source will need to have identical or closely similar properties. The most popular of the existing technology for processing vegetable or animal oils is based on the conversion of the triglycerides constituents to fatty acids methyl esters (FAME). FAME technology does not produce diesel fuel with identical properties as petro-diesel. Other alternative processing routes are dilution of the vegetable oils, emulsification, pyrolysis and hydrotreating. These routes are discussed in this paper. Appropriate technologies for small scale production of diesel range hydrocarbon fuel from vegetable oil without the need for co-reactants such methanol or hydrogen as part of the feedstock is emphased. Also alternative catalyst systems in place of the expensive precious metal supported catalysts are suggested

Policy options for improving regional fertilizer markets in West Africa:

A primary motivation for this study is to identify a key set of policy options for improving fertilizer markets in West Africa (among Economic Community of West African States member countries) in ways that ultimately will help improve the efficiency of regional markets and lower the transaction costs and fiscal burdens of increasing fertilizer use in the region. Guided by the 2008 fertilizer crisis, many governments are tempted to impose fertilizer subsidies to reduce fertilizer prices. Yet, in an environment riddled with inefficiencies that contribute to the high costs of using fertilizers, the introduction of subsidies only adds more fiscal burden.To carry out the study, we undertook four country case studies to review the key constraints and bottlenecks along the fertilizer supply chain. The countries were Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal, and the research included field visits in 2009 and 2010. The current paper is based on the country case study results, complemented by a literature review and analysis of secondary data sources.common fertilizer market, fertilizer use and supply, harmonization of products and regulations, improved technology, policy environment, regional market integration, structure and performance of markets, supply chain,

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF THE PROPOSED NORTH DAKOTA WHEAT POOL

The ND Durum Wheat Pool may provide additional revenue to durum wheat producers by raising the domestic prices in the North American market with full cooperation from the Canadian Wheat Board. The pool also could provide additional revenue to its members by improving marketing efficiency. On the other hand, the ND Spring Wheat Pool is less likely to provide additional revenue to spring wheat producers by raising domestic prices, mainly because hard red spring and winter wheat are highly substitutable. Efficiency gains also could be smaller than for durum wheat.marketing pool, market power, efficiency gains, durum wheat, hard red spring wheat, pool price, organizational structure, operating costs, Marketing,

Using Functional Programming to recognize Named Structure in an Optimization Problem: Application to Pooling

Branch-and-cut optimization solvers typically apply generic algorithms, e.g., cutting planes or primal heuristics, to expedite performance for many mathematical optimization problems. But solver software receives an input optimization problem as vectors of equations and constraints containing no structural information. This article proposes automatically detecting named special structure using the pattern matching features of functional programming. Specifically, we deduce the industrially-relevant nonconvex nonlinear Pooling Problem within a mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problem and show that we can uncover pooling structure in optimization problems which are not pooling problems. Previous work has shown that preprocessing heuristics can find network structures; we show that we can additionally detect nonlinear pooling patterns. Finding named structures allows us to apply, to generic optimization problems, cutting planes or primal heuristics developed for the named structure. To demonstrate the recognition algorithm, we use the recognized structure to apply primal heuristics to a test set of standard pooling problems

Employment Impacts of EU Biofuels Policy: Combining Bottom-up Technology Information and Sectoral Market Simulations in an Input-output Framework

This paper analyses the employment consequences of policies aimed to support biofuels in the European Union. The promotion of biofuel use has been advocated as a means to promote the sustainable use of natural resources and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions originating from transport activities on the one hand, and to reduce dependence on imported oil and thereby increase security of the European energy supply on the other hand. The employment impacts of increasing biofuels shares are calculated by taking into account a set of elements comprising the demand for capital goods required to produce biofuels, the additional demand for agricultural feedstock, higher fuel prices or reduced household budget in the case of price subsidisation, price effects ensuing from a hypothetical world oil price reduction linked to substitution in the EU market, and price impacts on agro-food commodities. The calculations refer to scenarios for the year 2020 targets as set out by the recent Renewable Energy Roadmap. Employment effects are assessed in an input-output framework taking into account bottom-up technology information to specify biofuels activities and linked to partial equilibrium models for the agricultural and energy sectors. The simulations suggest that biofuels targets on the order of 10-15% could be achieved without adverse net employment effects. -- In diesem Papier werden die Beschäftigungswirkungen der Förderung von Biokraftstoffen in der Europäischen Union untersucht. Die Förderung von Biokraftstoffen wird mit der nachhaltigen Nutzung natürlicher Ressourcen, der Reduktion von Treibhausgasemissionen im Transportsektor und der Verminderung der Erdölabhängigkeit und damit einhergehender erhöhter Energiesicherheit in Europa begründet. Bei der Quantifizierung der Beschäftigungseffekte der Biokraftstoffförderung in Europa wurden verschiedene Effekte berücksichtigt: gesteigerte Nachfrage nach Agrarerzeugnissen und Kapitalgütern zu Herstellung von Biokraftstoffen, höhere Kraftstoffpreise, Preisrückgänge auf dem Rohölmarkt infolge der Substitutionseffekte des Biokraftstoffeinsatzes und Preissteigerungen bei Agrarprodukten und Lebensmitteln. Dazu wird ein Input-Output Modell um die Biokraftstofferzeugung erweitert und mit Partialmodellen des Agrar- und Energiesektors gekoppelt. Als besonders wichtige Faktoren für potentielle Beschäftigungseffekte haben sich die Entwicklung einer auf den Weltmärkten führenden EU Biokraftstoffindustrie und der abschwächende Effekte der Biokraftstoffe auf den Ölpreis erwiesen. Die Simulationen legen nahe, dass sich die verschiedenen positiven und negativen Effekte weitgehend kompensieren und ein Biokraftstoffanteil von 10 ? 15 Prozent ohne signifikant negative Beschäftigungseffekte erzielt werden kann.Biofuels,Input-output,Employment

Fixed-Charge Solid Transportation Problem with Budget Constraints Based on Carbon Emission in Neutrosophic Environment

This paper is to integrate among solid transportation problem, budget constraints and carbon emission with probable maximum profit. The limits of air pollution and climate variation are solely dependent by exerting CO2 gas and rest greenhouse gases due to myriad transportation system. Henceforth, it is our apt mission to minimize carbon emission for pollution free environment. Again transportation system with single objective is hardly applicable to the situation with more than one criterion. Therefore multi- objective decision making is incorporated for designing reallife transportation problem. Due to time pressure, data limitation, lack of information or measurement errors in practical problems, there exist some hesitations or suspicions. Based on the fact, decision maker considers indeterminacy in the designed problems. To overcome the restriction on occurrence and non-occurrence of fuzzy and intuitionistic fuzzy, neutrosophic set is very important and suitable to accommodate such general structure of problems. Therefore neutrosophic environment with neutrosophic linear programming, fuzzy programming and global criterion method are profiled to search the compromise solution of the multi- objective transportation problem (MOTP). Thereafter, the performance of the considered model is useful by evaluating a numerical example; and then the derived results are compared. Finally sensitivity analysis and conclusions with upcoming works of this research are stated hereafter.PID2020-112754GB-I0 B-TIC-640-UGR2

Computer analysis of effects of altering jet fuel properties on refinery costs and yields

This study was undertaken to evaluate the adequacy of future U.S. jet fuel supplies, the potential for large increases in the cost of jet fuel, and to what extent a relaxation in jet fuel properties would remedy these potential problems. The results of the study indicate that refiners should be able to meet jet fuel output requirements in all regions of the country within the current Jet A specifications during the 1990-2010 period. The results also indicate that it will be more difficult to meet Jet A specifications on the West Coast, because the feedstock quality is worse and the required jet fuel yield (jet fuel/crude refined) is higher than in the East. The results show that jet fuel production costs could be reduced by relaxing fuel properties. Potential cost savings in the East (PADDs I-IV) through property relaxation were found to be about 1.3 cents/liter (5 cents/gallon) in January 1, 1981 dollars between 1990 and 2010. However, the savings from property relaxation were all obtained within the range of current Jet A specifications, so there is no financial incentive to relax Jet A fuel specifications in the East. In the West (PADD V) the potential cost savings from lowering fuel quality were considerably greater than in the East. Cost savings from 2.7 to 3.7 cents/liter (10-14 cents/gallon) were found. In contrast to the East, on the West Coast a significant part of the savings was obtained through relaxation of the current Jet A fuel specifications

Why Don't Country Elevators Pay Less for Low Quality Wheat? Information, Producer Preferences and Prospect Theory

Previous research found that country elevators that are the first in their area to grade wheat and pay quality-adjusted prices would receive above-normal profits at the expense of their competitors. Because of spatial monopsony, these early-adopting elevators would pass on to producers only 70% of the quality-based price differentials received from next-in-line buyers. If competing elevators also adopted these practices, profits for all elevators would return to near normal, and elevators would pass on to producers nearly all price differentials received from next-in-line buyers. However, that research could not explain why more elevators were not becoming "early adopters" by paying quality-adjusted prices. More recent research found that producers' risk aversion and lack of information about the quality of their wheat could explain more of the failure of country elevators to pass on premiums and discounts. If producers are risk averse, an elevator that imposes discounts for lower quality wheat, even while paying a higher price for high quality wheat, risks losing business if producers believe that a competing elevator may be more likely to pay them a higher price net of discounts. However, even more important is the level of information producers have about the quality of their wheat before selling it to an elevator. Still, these explanations account for only part of elevators' apparent reluctance to pay quality-adjusted prices. Since inconsistencies have been observed between expected utility and individuals' behavior, this research considers the case where producers' preferences can be more appropriately modeled by prospect theory, and whether such preferences can explain more of elevators' reluctance to pay quality-adjusted prices. A simulation model is used to measure the effects of risk-averse producers (in both expected utility and prospect theory frameworks) and limited quality information on profits that can be earned by an elevator that pays quality-adjusted prices. Results indicate that prospect theory helps to explain part, but not all, of the reluctance to pay quality-adjusted prices.Crop Production/Industries, Demand and Price Analysis,