Abstract
Environmental obligation, fuel security, and human health issues have fuelled the search for locally produced sustainable transport fuels as an alternative to liquid petroleum. This study evaluates the sustainability performance of various alternative energy sources, namely, ethanol, electricity, electricity-gasoline hybrid, and hydrogen, for Western Australian road transport using a life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) framework. The framework employs 11 triple bottom line (TBL) sustainability indicators and uses threshold values for benchmarking sustainability practices. A number of improvement strategies were devised based on the hotspots once the alternative energy sources failed to meet the sustainability threshold for the determined indicators. The proposed framework effectively addresses the issue of interdependencies between the three pillars of sustainability, which was an inherent weakness of previous frameworks. The results show that the environment-friendly and socially sustainable energy options, namely, ethanol-gasoline blend E55, electricity, electricity-E10 hybrid, and hydrogen, would need around 0.02, 0.14, 0.10, and 0.71 AUD/VKT of financial support, respectively, to be comparable to gasoline. Among the four assessed options, hydrogen shows the best performance for the environmental and social bottom line when renewable electricity is employed for hydrogen production. The economic sustainability of hydrogen fuel is, however, uncertain at this stage due to the high cost of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs). The robustness of the proposed framework warrants its application in a wide range of alternative fuel assessment scenarios locally as well as globally.
Highlights
Concerns regarding climate change along with related health issues, increasing expenses of non-renewable energy sources, and the geopolitical vulnerability related to fossil fuel supplies have propelled countries to look for clean and renewable substitutes [1,2,3]
triple bottom line (TBL) improvement strategies are incorporated into the frFaumeelwooprtkiotonsmaereet tchoentshirdeeshreodldfvoarluseo.cial assessment only if all the environmental life cycle assessment (ELCA) indicators satisfy the thresholdFuvealluoepst.ioTnhsisarise fcoollnoswideedrebdyfeocrosnoocmialicaassesesssmsmenetnto,nwlyhicfhalils the tEhLirCdAphinadsiecaotfotrhsessautisstfayinthaebility assetshsrmesehnotldofvtahlueese. leTchtiesdisfufeolllopwteidonbsy
Occupational health and safety (OHAS): 5 health based on vehicle exhaust emission (HHVEE): CO ≈ 1.92 × 10−1 gm/vehicle kilometre travel (VKT); PM ≈ 8.18 × 10−4 gm/VKT; NOx emission (3.86 × 10−3 gm/km) still fails to meet the criterion due to the higher value compared to gasoline per km
Summary
Concerns regarding climate change along with related health issues, increasing expenses of non-renewable energy sources, and the geopolitical vulnerability related to fossil fuel supplies have propelled countries to look for clean and renewable substitutes [1,2,3]. Mining, which is the life blood of WA’s economy, has the same energy consumption (239.7 PJ, 22.36%) as the transport sector (230.7 PJ, 21.5%) [9] This is because people are heavily dependent on passenger cars, and the use of public transport is not popular due to the dispersed locations within WA and long distances between population centres [10]. A few studies [20,21,22,23,24] in different sectors, such as fuel, electricity, bio-refineries, and application of solar energy, applied multi-criteria decision-making techniques to combine the three objectives of sustainability based on different weighting approaches, but a scenario analysis with regard to interdependencies between the TBL indicators was absent [17]. The study presents a novel approach to evaluating alternative fuels using Hoque et al.’s framework [5], which proposed incorporating the TBL of sustainability, threshold values, and a life cycle approach
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