Land use of energy supply for carbon neutral mobility: a well-to-wheel analysis

Abstract

BackgroundThe transition to carbon neutral mobility will require a lot of carbon neutral energy, but a lot of spaceas well. In many countries, it will be a challenge to find this space or to import enough energy. Land use indicators related to sustainable mobility usually focus on space for transport infrastructure and parking, i.e. direct land use, and do not include energy supply. Existing literature on the emerging research field of ‘energy landscapes’ has not covered the transport sector.ObjectiveThe aim of this paper is to estimate the order of magnitude of land or sea area required for carbon neutral mobility.MethodIn a well-to-wheel analysis, we investigate the land use for the production, transport, storage, distribution, and charging/refuelling of carbon neutral energy carriers for various modes of transport. The analysis focuses on the Netherlands, but part of the results are expected to be broadly applicable to other countries as well.FindingsThe results show that electricity from wind or solar energy supplied to electric vehicles is the most space efficient. Use of hydrogen and synthetic fuels in vehicles takes 2–5 times more land, while use of biofuels from energy crops takes 100 times more land compared to the electricity route. We also conclude that the indirect land use for energy supply for carbon neutral road transport in the Netherlands is in the same order of magnitude as the current direct land use of road mobility.