Life Cycle Analysis of Biofuel. A Comparative Study of the UK and Nepal

Masters Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Environmental Sciences, University of Teesside, language: English, abstract: Biofuels; this renewable source of energy is gaining popularity all over the world to fulfil the global energy requirements. In Europe, including the UK, biofuel is used as liquid transport fuel. However, it is not used as widely as what people estimate. Therefore, the world is facing the problems of harnessing of renewable energy resources, and there are greater concerns about the emissions produced by burning of fossil fuels, such as petroleum and coal, its use is unquantifiable and hampering the worlds living ecosystem. Accomplishing the ever increasing demand of energy and to mitigate the problems of climate change by reducing GHG emissions from transport fuel and to promote fuel security and reduces the imports of fuels from energy rich countries, European Union has formulated Biofuel Directive (2003/30/EC) stating that the member states will implement this policy to include at least 5.75% of biofuel in the fossil fuel and increased the recent scenarios of 7% to 20% by 2020. Supporting the directive, the UK government has formulated RTFO policy to implement to reduce the use of fossil fuel by 5% in 2010 and follow the process to obtain the renewable target. Basically, this study focuses on the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of biofuel crops as a source of biofuel, such as biodiesel and bioethanol to be used in transportation sectors to meet the renewable target by reducing the GHG emissions and imports of fossil fuel. The subject of the study also gives an overview of the comparative study of the impacts of growing biofuel crops in Nepal and in the UK on environmental and socio-economic issues, like impacts on land, water, biodiversity, and food and energy security. At the outcome of the study, will it be helpful to coin similar model to RTFO in Nepal and gives hint how the model is unfair to implement in Nepal.