Decarbonization potential of on-road fuels and powertrains in the European Union and the United States: a well-to-wheels assessment

Transportation is fundamental for any modern economy, but its growing energy demand and the related climate impact call for urgent action. Life-cycle analysis (LCA) is a suitable approach to assessing the greenhouse gas (GHG) performance and decarbonization potential of transportation fuels and vehicle powertrains. Here, we assessed well-to-wheels (WTW) GHG emission reductions for a wide set of light-duty vehicle fuel and powertrain technologies used in the European Union (EU) and the United States (U.S.) for their decarbonization potential. We focused on the similarities and differences of the results and the underlying methodologies and data of the two analyses. We evaluated the decarbonization potential of new fuel–vehicle systems in Europe and the United States in comparison to the baseline petroleum gasoline and diesel vehicles in each market. For the transportation fuels examined in both regions, waste-to-fuel technologies and drop-in renewable diesel fuels (biofuels) produced from residues offer the biggest opportunities for reducing per-energy-unit GHG emissions, but may be limited in scale-up potentials given feedstock availabilities, qualities, and logistics challenges. The potential benefits of electricity and hydrogen as fuels span a wide range, determined by the primary energy source and the potential deployment of carbon capture and sequestration technologies. From a tank-to-wheels perspective, electric powertrains, with higher energy efficiency than internal combustion engines, provide incontrovertible evidence of GHG savings. For vehicle–fuel combined systems, the per km WTW results from GREET are generally higher than the JEC estimates, owing to greater vehicle fuel consumption attributable to larger vehicle sizes and more aggressive driving cycles in the U.S. This paper highlights key drivers of WTW fuel–vehicle system GHG emissions as well as opportunities and limitations to decarbonize light-duty transportation in Europe and the United States with promising alternative fuel production and vehicle powertrain technologies. Results show that major solutions in both regions are aligned, despite certain differences in the methodologies and results of the WTW analyses. As well as informing optimal selection of fuel and powertrain technologies for future vehicles, these findings are also useful in informing how existing vehicles can best be decarbonized through the use of renewable fuels and advanced powertrain technologies

JEC Well-To-Wheels report v5

JRC (the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission), EUCAR and Concawe have updated their joint evaluation of the Well-to-Wheels energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for a wide range of potential future fuel and powertrain options, first published in December 2003. As an update of the previous version, the objectives of JEC WTW v5 are to establish, in a transparent and objective manner, a consensual Well-to-Wheels energy use and GHG emissions assessment of a wide range of automotive fuels and powertrains relevant to Europe in 2025 and beyond. This versions updates the technologies investigated and applies a common methodology and data-set to estimate WTW emissions. This WTW version 5 concentrates on the evaluation of energy and GHG balances for the different combinations of fuel and powertrains, in road transport. The current version 5 investigates, for the first time, the heavy duty segment, thus expanding the scope of the previous versions of the study.JRC.C.2-Energy Efficiency and Renewable

JEC Well-to-Tank report v5: Well-to-Wheels analysis of future automotive fuels and powertrains in the European context

The JEC consortium is a long-standing collaboration among the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC), EUCAR (the European council for Automotive Research and development) and Concawe (the scientific body of the European Refiners’ Association for environment, health and safety in refining and distribution). The consortium periodically updates their joint evaluation of the Well-to-Wheels (WTW) energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, for a wide range of potential future powertrains and fuels options, within the European context. The present Well-To-Tank report belongs to a series of JEC WTW related reports where the process of producing, transporting, manufacturing and distributing a number of fuels suitable for road transport powertrains is described. The JEC WTT v5 assesses the incremental emissions (marginal approach) associated with the production of a unit of alternative fuel, with respect to the current status of production.JRC.C.2-Energy Efficiency and Renewable

The discovery and follow-up of four transiting short-period sub-Neptunes orbiting M dwarfs

Sub-Neptunes with radii of 2–3 R⊕ are intermediate in size between rocky planets and Neptune-sized planets. The orbital properties and bulk compositions of transiting sub-Neptunes provide clues to the formation and evolution of close-in small planets. In this paper, we present the discovery and follow-up of four sub-Neptunes orbiting M dwarfs (TOI-782, TOI-1448, TOI-2120, and TOI-2406), three of which were newly validated by ground-based follow-up observations and statistical analyses. TOI-782 b, TOI-1448 b, TOI-2120 b, and TOI-2406 b have radii of Rp = 2.740 +0.082-0.079 R⊕, 2.769+0.073-0.068 R⊕, 2.120 ± 0.067 R⊕, and 2.830+0.068-0.066 R⊕ and orbital periods of P = 8.02, 8.11, 5.80, and 3.08 days, respectively. Doppler monitoring with the Subaru/InfraRed Doppler instrument led to 2σ upper limits on the masses of <19.1 M⊕, <19.5 M⊕, <6.8 M⊕, and <15.6 M⊕ for TOI-782 b, TOI-1448 b, TOI-2120 b, and TOI-2406 b, respectively. The mass–radius relationship of these four sub-Neptunes testifies to the existence of volatile material in their interiors. These four sub-Neptunes, which are located above the so-called "radius valley," are likely to retain a significant atmosphere and/or an icy mantle on the core, such as a water world. We find that at least three of the four sub-Neptunes (TOI-782 b, TOI-2120 b, and TOI-2406 b), orbiting M dwarfs older than 1 Gyr, are likely to have eccentricities of e ∼ 0.2–0.3. The fact that tidal circularization of their orbits is not achieved over 1 Gyr suggests inefficient tidal dissipation in their interiors.Peer reviewe

Monoubiquitination of RPN10 regulates substrate recruitment to the proteasome

El pdf del artículo es al manuscrito de autor (PubMed).-- et al.The proteasome recognizes its substrates via a diverse set of ubiquitin receptors, including subunits Rpn10/S5a and Rpn13. In addition, shuttling factors, such as Rad23, recruit substrates to the proteasome by delivering ubiquitinated proteins. Despite the increasing understanding of the factors involved in this process, the regulation of substrate delivery remains largely unexplored. Here we report that Rpn10 is monoubiquitinated in vivo and that this modification has profound effects on proteasome function. Monoubiquitination regulates the capacity of Rpn10 to interact with substrates by inhibiting Rpn10's ubiquitin-interacting motif (UIM). We show that Rsp5, a member of NEDD4 ubiquitin-protein ligase family, and Ubp2, a deubiquitinating enzyme, control the levels of Rpn10 monoubiquitination in vivo. Notably, monoubiquitination of Rpn10 is decreased under stress conditions, suggesting a mechanism of control of receptor availability mediated by the Rsp5-Ubp2 system. Our results reveal an unanticipated link between monoubiquitination signal and regulation of proteasome function.This work was performed in the Institute of Molecular Biology of Barcelona (IBMB), supported by Spanish Government (MICINN) grant BFU2006-02928. MS analysis was performed at Harvard Medical School (HMS). We acknowledge National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants GM065592 (D.F.) and GM67945 (S.G).Peer reviewe

Advanced Emission Controls and Sustainable Renewable Fuels for Low Pollutant and CO2 Emissions on a Diesel Passenger Car

Research efforts into advanced emission control systems led to significant reduction of pollutant emissions of modern internal combustion engines. Sustainable renewable fuels are used to further reduce their Well-to-Wheels greenhouse gas emissions. The novel aspect of this paper is the compatibility investigation of existing advanced emission control technologies for achieving low pollutant emissions with the use of sustainable renewable fuels with vehicle tests. This is done on a diesel demonstrator vehicle, equipped with Lean NOx trap and dual-SCR technologies in combination with a 48V mild-hybrid powertrain. Tailpipe pollutant and CO2 emissions are measured for market diesel fuel with 7% renewable fatty-acid-methyl-ester (FAME) (B7), diesel fuel with 30% FAME (B30), and 100% renewable hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO). Results show no significant difference in pollutant emissions between the different fuels used. In a second part of the study, a Well-to-Wheels (WTW) analysis is conducted. This includes different pathways for the biomass-to-liquid fuels that were tested on the vehicle, as well as a power-to-diesel (e-diesel) assessment. Results show that significant WTW CO2 reductions are possibly compared to the state-of-the-art market diesel fuel. Part of this reduction is already possible for the existing fleet as most of paraffinic compounds are drop-in for market diesel fuel

Advanced Emission Controls and Sustainable Renewable Fuels for Low Pollutant and CO₂ Emissions on a Diesel Passenger Car

Research efforts into advanced emission control systems led to significant reduction of pollutant emissions of modern internal combustion engines. Sustainable renewable fuels are used to further reduce their Well-to-Wheels greenhouse gas emissions. The novel aspect of this paper is the compatibility investigation of existing advanced emission control technologies for achieving low pollutant emissions with the use of sustainable renewable fuels with vehicle tests. This is done on a diesel demonstrator vehicle, equipped with Lean NOx trap and dual-SCR technologies in combination with a 48V mild-hybrid powertrain. Tailpipe pollutant and CO2 emissions are measured for market diesel fuel with 7% renewable fatty-acid-methyl-ester (FAME) (B7), diesel fuel with 30% FAME (B30), and 100% renewable hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO). Results show no significant difference in pollutant emissions between the different fuels used. In a second part of the study, a Well-to-Wheels (WTW) analysis is conducted. This includes different pathways for the biomass-to-liquid fuels that were tested on the vehicle, as well as a power-to-diesel (e-diesel) assessment. Results show that significant WTW CO2 reductions are possibly compared to the state-of-the-art market diesel fuel. Part of this reduction is already possible for the existing fleet as most of paraffinic compounds are drop-in for market diesel fuel

Universal Dependencies 2.8.1

Universal Dependencies is a project that seeks to develop cross-linguistically consistent treebank annotation for many languages, with the goal of facilitating multilingual parser development, cross-lingual learning, and parsing research from a language typology perspective. The annotation scheme is based on (universal) Stanford dependencies (de Marneffe et al., 2006, 2008, 2014), Google universal part-of-speech tags (Petrov et al., 2012), and the Interset interlingua for morphosyntactic tagsets (Zeman, 2008). Version 2.8.1 fixes a bug in 2.8 where a portion of the Dutch Alpino treebank was accidentally omitted