Assessing green methanol vehicles' deployment with life cycle assessment-system dynamics model

Chengjiang Li, Qianwen Hao, Honglei Wang, Yu-jie Hu, Guoteng Xu, Quande Qin, Xiaolin Wang and Michael Negnevitsky

Applied Energy, 2024, vol. 363, issue C, No S0306261924004380

Abstract: Due to the high CO2 emissions during the coal-to-methanol process, conventional coal-to-methanol vehicles' life cycle environmental impact is significant. As the world's largest market for methanol vehicle applications, China is exploring a ‘green methanol vehicles’ route: using CO2-to-methanol or biomass-to-methanol in internal combustion engine vehicles. However, the economy, effectiveness in reducing carbon emissions, and changes in resource consumption of green methanol vehicles have yet to be investigated. This study first conducts a ‘Resource-Environment-Economy’ life cycle assessment on vehicles from different routes, including green methanol vehicles. Next, this study builds a system dynamics model based on the Resource-Environment-Economy assessment boundaries to predict the development trend of green methanol vehicles in the designed scenarios. CO2-to-methanol vehicle emits 24% less CO2 over their life cycle than gasoline vehicle, which can be a reasonable alternative from 2028. By 2030, biomass-to-methanol vehicle has a high development potential with minimal energy and less water consumption. It suggests that green methanol vehicles be incorporated into new energy vehicles and enjoy preferential policies.

Keywords: Methanol vehicle; CO2-to-methanol; Biomass-to-methanol; Life cycle assessment; System dynamics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261924004380
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:363:y:2024:i:c:s0306261924004380

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.123055

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().