Benchmarking biofuels

At the request of Greenpeace Netherlands, CE Delft has developed a sustainability benchmark for transport biofuels and used it to evaluate the various biofuels currently on the market. For comparison, electric vehicles, hydrogen vehicles and  petrol/diesel vehicles were also included.

A range of studies as well as growing insight are making it ever clearer that biomass-based transport fuels may have just as big a carbon footprint as fossil fuels like petrol or diesel, or even bigger. At the request of Greenpeace Netherlands, CE Delft has brought together current understanding on the sustainability of fossil fuels, biofuels and electric vehicles, with particular focus on the performance of the respective energy carriers on three sustainability criteria, with the first weighing the heaviest: 

1. Greenhouse gas emissions
2. Land use
3. Nutrient consumption