The challenge of forecasting the role of biofuel in EU transport decarbonisation at 2050: A meta-analysis review of published scenarios

The European New Green Deal and the REDII set ambitious targets, aiming to achieve a climate-neutral Europe by 2050. The transport sector is the most critical area to decarbonize, given the rigidity of both infrastructure and end-use technologies, as well as the challenge of reaching cost-effective production of sustainable advanced renewable fuels. Several researchers, stakeholders and groups of interest, such as international and governmental organisations, NGOs, business analysists, scientists and other actors elaborated scenarios on biofuels market penetration by 2050. These studies are largely used by policy makers, even if not necessarily were subject to a rigid peer review and verification process. This work presents an extensive literature review of the main published investigations, to assess and quantify the authors' different visions. These forecasts intend to evaluate the possible future development of the sector based on current and foreseeable policies, as well as industry and investors' business plans; at the same time, these estimates should also provide policy makers with a sound base for policy development towards achieving climate goals. Through preliminary screening, based on a methodology of a set of ex-ante conditions, this work identified the most relevant publications and structured the analysis of the collected data. A total of 18 publications were selected from the literature review, resulting in 56 scenarios to be examined. This work allowed to achieve a comprehensive summary and quantification of the selected scenarios, all of which focus on biofuel contribution to transport decarbonisation in the period 2030-2050. Given the occurrence of several factors, as the ongoing and future technological development, the adoption of more efficient mobility models, the hybridization and electrification of transports, the Total Fuel Consumption for the transport sector is expected to reduce in Europe: averaged projections from the analyzed scenarios account for 312.8 Mtoe in 2030 and 274.2 Mtoe in 2050. Biofuels are expected to significantly contribute to achieve the EU targets, with a progressive shift towards advanced feedstock: on average, their total contribution is expected to account for 24.5 Mtoe in 2030, and for 48.3 Mtoe in 2050, while advanced biofuels are projected for an average contribution of 8.7 Mtoe in 2030 and 36.5 Mtoe in 2050. This work analysed pre-pandemic published scenarios: the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic is having on the global as well as EU economies are uncertain, but there is a serious risk of hampering and postponing investment decisions in the whole energy area, making the achievement of RED and EU Green Deal targets even more challenging in this historical moment.

Automated summary

The European New Green Deal and the REDII have set ambitious targets to achieve a climate-neutral Europe by 2050, with a particular focus on the transport sector for decarbonization. Various stakeholders have elaborated scenarios on biofuels market penetration by 2050, which are used by policy makers to evaluate the future development of the sector. Biofuels are expected to significantly contribute to reducing Total Fuel Consumption in Europe by 2030 and 2050, with a shift towards advanced feedstock. Previous published scenarios may face challenges due to the uncertain effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy and investment decisions in the energy sector.