Final Report: Academic Monitoring of the Tour d‘Europe

The road transport sector has to reduce its CO2e emissions. The EU and its member states have set climate neutrality goals in accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement. Several solutions are proposed in addition to the electrification of on-road vehicles. One of these is the use of renewable fuels. Today, several types of renewable fuels with a GHG reduction potential compared to fossil fuels are available with varying degrees of GHG reduction potential - up to a high mark of over 90 %. For waste-based feedstocks, mitigation effects can increases the reduction potential further. These fuels can achieve a considerable GHG reduction in existing vehicle fleets powered by internal combustion engines and could also contribute to new vehicles being sold in the future.

Tour d’Europe is a technology demonstration which aims to show:

• the availability and feasibility of renewable fuels for vehicle fleets across Europe
• the potential of digital monitoring for verified CO2 well-to-wheel emissions
• the potential for legislative action regarding CO2 emission performance standards.

European climate legislation related to road transport and its corresponding fuel distribution knows two different approaches. Renewable fuels are documented in national databases with emission factors which represent the climate impact of fuels in a well-to-tank approach. A fuel from a renewable base uses carbon or carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, residues or waste, also known as biogenic or captured CO2, and has therefore the potential for much lower emission factors compared to the fossil reference of 94 gCO2e/MJ. The Renewable Energy Directive is in place for the calculation of the emission factors.

In contrast, CO2 emission standards for vehicles follow a tailpipe measurement approach. Since the combustion of carbon-based renewable fuels lead to comparable CO2 emissions in the test procedure, no advantage based on the use of these fuels is attributed. The use of digital monitoring aims to close this gap to provide certifiable information from the fuel distribution until final energy conversion in the vehicle. Today, tracking and certification is well established for the production and distribution of renewable fuels. However, actions are required to include the final use of these fuels in vehicles to achieve maximum effective greenhouse gas reduction in the vehicle fleet.

What happened during Tour d’Europe

A total of 16 different vehicles of various types, fuel types and from different manufacturers powered by a combustion engine took part in the Tour d'Europe. The vehicle fleet consists of eleven passenger cars and five heavy duty vehicles. A total of eight of the participating vehicles were diesel-powered, while seven were gasoline-powered including one vehicle with E85-flexfuel technology. Finally, one heavy-duty vehicle was powered by BioLNG. The vehicles made a total of 322 refueling stops in 18 different European countries on five different routes across Europe. A wide variety of renewable fuels were used. The vehicles have covered a total of well over 82800 km across Europe. The data also represents the real-life experience of users travelling across Europe. Already today, only 14 % of standard fuel blends had to be used as the result of regional unavailability.

What amount of renewable fuel was used?

The total amount of gasoline-type fuel used during the tour was 1867 l, which corresponds to 17 % of the total fuel during the tour. As part of the gasoline fuel, 797 l of standard gasoline blends were refueled. Furthermore, 206 l of E85, 486 l of fully renewable gasoline and 377 l further blends with proven GHG reduction. A significant amount (around 1069 l – 57 %) of the used gasoline fuel had a certified renewable component.

The second category of fuels is BioLNG. In total, a volume of 2207 l of BioLNG were refueled. This represents a share of 20 % of the total fuel during Tour d’Europe.
Diesel-type fuels were the most common type of fuel used during the tour (approx. 63 % in total). A total of 6886 l of diesel fuel was used: 150 l of B100 and 6080 l of HVO100. This resulted in 90 % of the fuel used being renewable. The amount of standard diesel blends was 656 l.

The GHG reduction achieved by renewable fuels is based on the analysis of the well-to-wheel CO2e footprint of the respective fuel. This takes into account the acquisition of raw materials, processing into fuel, distribution and use in the vehicle. As of today, most of the available renewable fuels are bio-based fuels, gaseous as BioLNG and liquid such as HVO100, B100, Bio-Ethanol and their blends with fossil fuels or other renewable fuels. For these fuels, biological materials such as vegetable oils, residues and waste materials or energy crops are used as feedstocks. This means that the GHG reductions achieved by using renewable fuels are based on the actual fuel that is filled into the vehicle’s fuel tank and are therefore real, verifiable and certified according to European regulations. All these fuels are reported and are provided with a proof of sustainability.

How was the GHG reduction of the renewable fuels tracked and verified?

A specially developed monitoring system is used for tracking the fuel and vehicles during the Tour d’Europe. This uses data from the respective vehicle such as tank level, GPS position, time, mileage and other information as well as information from the filling station about the fuel (based on the proof of sustainability). The refueling events can thus be monitored and verified via data synchronization in the cloud and the CO2e emission factor of the tank filling can be determined. Of the total amount of fuel used during the Tour d’Europe, 86 % can be categorized as renewable fuels (or their blends). Of the total fuel amount, 61 % have been fully digitally monitored. For this share of fuel, the emission factors used can be tracked and the refueling events were digitally monitored. The remaining 25 % of the used renewable fuel volume were partially digitally monitored and complemented by a manual monitoring process. The latter was due to, either the emission factor of the fuel not provided on time, or the digital tracking itself being incomplete. However, as the type of fuel and quantity fueled were documented manually by using the receipts from the fuel station the full monitoring could be completed. Finally, only 14 % of the total fuels used in the tour are standard fuel blends, which have also been digitally monitored. This means that despite the challenging availability of necessary information for this monitoring procedure across Europe, all renewable fuels, which corresponds to 86 % of the total amount of fuel used during the Tour d'Europe, could be verified and certified.

Was Tour d’Europe able to reduce its vehicle CO2e impact?

A wide variety of fuels with different GHG reduction potentials were used. The fuel-specific GHG reductions compared to the fossil reference achieved, on a well-to-wheel basis, ranged from 66.5 % to 83.5 % for the liquid fuels. The manure-based BioLNG achieved a reduction of 155.5 % because of avoided methane emissions.

However, all the renewable fuel options used have further reduction potential. This potential results from the use of other feedstocks (e.g. waste materials), and of improved production processes.

The overall result of the Tour d’Europe is expressed as absolute emissions of CO2e. For the overall fuel mix of the Tour d’Europe, including standard fuel blends used during the tour, the total GHG reduction reaches 77 %, showing a significant reduction in well-to-wheel CO2e emissions with the given status of fuel availability. The renewable fuels (and their blends) by themselves achieved an 87 % GHG reduction.

In this context, each improvement of fuel properties would be immediately visible as further GHG reduction. This could be achieved by higher blend rates with or a switch to other types of renewable fuels with higher GHG reduction. This has been demonstrated with the renewable fuels used during the Tour d’Europe.

What has Tour d’Europe shown?

The GHG reduction potential of future renewable fuels will further grow and reliable monitoring processes will be available.