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Well to Wheel carbon calculation
Yesterday, I had a colleague tell me that introducing the idea of W2W (Well to Wheel), sometimes also called W2T or well to tank, is akin to my 9-year-old showing up for math class and being introduced to calculus. In other words, we should start with simple arithmetic before going down the road of the more complicated and detailed considerations of a complete carbon footprint calculation.
Let’s start with the very basics: what is meant by Well to Wheel when discussed in the popular media?
Well refers to the oil well. Yes, that hole in the ground where we have placed drills and pipes for the past 100 years to suck up the sticky black crude. But the term “well” can be confusing, because really we are talking about all forms of liquid energy and their origins. For example, biofuels are not made from anything that is pumped from beneath the surface of the earth’s crust but rather from waste products such as algae and grain or oil seed crops. The term “well” refers to where the feedstock originated.
Wheel, you will have guessed, refers to the wheel of a car or truck.
Think of it this way… How much work / energy / effort is required to access a particular feedstock, to process or refine it and to transport and install it in a vehicle to make the wheels move? The other way to think about this is in terms of the carbon footprint, the carbon emitted through the work to move the raw feedstock to a usable form; i.e. the turning of wheels in machines – our cars.
The recent Hollywood movie There Will be Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, is a story about the early days of oil production in the United States. In dramatic fashion, we see the relative simplicity and ease with which the early pioneers were able to access oil. If you click on the trailer for the movie and watch the first minute and a half, you will see what I mean. Punch a hole in the ground and whoosh, up came what is referred to as “sweet crude”, the lightest and best form of oil for refining. Part of this story was true of oil production through the first half of the 20th century.
Today, oil is drilled far offshore, under ice, in areas of severe weather events and very deep into the earth’s crust, or as with the Canadian tar sands, scooped up from the crust and then processed into liquid crude.
So what do you think requires more energy to extract and refine? The easy sweet crude of the 1920s or the oil? And which of these would produce more carbon?
When we talk about biofuels, the question remains. How much energy is required to extract and refine them? For example, researchers include the amount of fertilizer used (many fertilizers are petroleum based and require energy to produce) or the amount of machinery used to prepare the soil and seed and harvest the crop.
Well to Wheel is becoming an important consideration for governments
(and those of California and British Columbia are leading the charge in North America) around the globe when determining national energy policy, and it could therefore become a mainstream issue around the discussion of sustainability and consumer choice at the pump.
1 Comment
October 2, 2008 by Curtis Mearns
Well to Wheel or also know as full fuel-cycle is the calculation of all the emissions from cradle to grave. The highest reward is when feedstock comes from a recycled and reused. Currently the biofuels industry is in early stages of development or first generation biofuels. These fuels have been heavily promoted by the agricultural associations as additional revenue source for the farmer until the effect of this thinking resulted in completion for food supply.
Sustainable development has been defined as balancing the fulfillment of human needs with the protection of the natural environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but in the indefinite future. By definition, non-renewable sources of energy are not sustainable because they are running out. There renewable sources of energy need to augment these dwindling supplies, so when the inevitable happened, society will have transitioned safely to a sustainable existence. Government policy will create the economic conditions through a series of incentives and penalties. In particular, the Carbon Tax will increase the price of high carbon fuels until it becomes financially painful and switching to cleaner burning fuels saves money.
Renewable energy is energy generated from natural resources—such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides and geothermal heat—which are renewable (naturally replenished). Renewable energy technologies include solar power, wind power, hydroelectricity, micro hydro, biomass and biofuels. Biomass may also include biodegradable wastes that can be burnt as fuel. It excludes organic material which has been transformed by geological processes into substances such as coal or petroleum because these substances are non-renewable.
Bioenergy is light energy converted into chemical energy by living organisms. This photosynthesized energy can be extract from the biomass into a liquid form or a biofuel. Renewable bioenergy holds out promise that energy stored in the biomass can be converted to a higher valued use. Next generation of technology will make use of these stores of energy in a new way that in essence cleans-up problematic energy waste into a value added liquid biofuel that when combined with petroleum and when combusted will reduce the harmful emissions to the environment.
First-generation biofuels refer to biofuels made from sugar, starch, vegetable oil, or animal fats using conventional technology. Some of this feedstock compete directly with the animal or human food chain, and as the global population has risen their use in producing biofuels has been criticized for diverting food away from the human food chain, leading to food shortages and price rises. Feedstock that competes with food must be reconsidered on humanitarian grounds.
In time, the promise of biomass waste to liquid will become a reality – so the challenges of first generation will be resolved as transition to second generation takes place.
Second-generation biofuels refer to biofuels production, use biomass to liquid technology, and can processes variety of non food crops. These include waste biomass; like pine beetle wood in the forest sector, stalks or residue in the agriculture sector, and municipal solid waste.
Well to Wheel calculation by definition will be superior, since the calculator starts after this initial use and when a truck was sent to pick up the waste for processing.