(488f) Comparative Economic and Environmental Assessments of Methanol Production from CO2: Transport Vs. Energy

Methanol from captured CO₂ has been promoted as an alternative green fuel due to its low carbon footprint. In this study, the techno-economic and environmental impacts of the electricity and transport sectors were analysed simultaneously at endpoint levels e.g. human health, ecosystems quality and resource depletion. Different scenarios were investigated with different uses of the carbon-free energy source (electricity from wind in this case). Six countries were selected according to their differences in the energy mix grids. The obtained results show that decarbonising the energy grid with CCS offers greater environmental savings with no significant increase in the economic assessment compared to producing methanol from captured CO₂ over their full life cycle assessment. Our results highlight the importance of performing a transport-electricity nexus analysis when assessing the proposed alternative fuels along with the demand for detailed LCA in policy making for both sectors. Life cycle thinking should be applied to the sectors with the highest CO₂ emissions such as transport and energy to fully understand the implications for each scenario and to prevent emissions shifting from the transport sector to the energy sector.