Glob­al Bioen­er­gies: Estim­a­tion of a reduc­tion of 69% GHG emis­sions for fully renew­able ETBE

As part of the ISO­PROD pro­ject fin­anced by the Inves­t­isse­ments d’Avenir pro­gram and oper­ated by the ADEME, an assess­ment of the envir­on­ment­al impact of the future renew­able isob­utene plant IBN-One was per­formed by Evea, a com­pany spe­cial­ized in Life Cycle Assess­ment (LCA) and eco-design. The LCA focused on the pro­duc­tion of renew­able isob­utene derived from sug­ar beet under the IBN-One plant design in col­lab­or­a­tion with Cristal Uni­on, part­ner of Glob­al Bioen­er­gies in this joint-ven­ture. Samuel Causse, Agro-Resources & Green Chem­istry depart­ment man­ager at EVEA, declares: ​“In terms of usage and end-of-life, we ana­lyzed sev­er­al dimen­sions of envir­on­ment­al foot­print, green­house gases emis­sions being one of them. Our ana­lys­is led to eco-design recom­mend­a­tions which will be imple­men­ted in the pro­cess. We are proud to have been selec­ted for assess­ing and improv­ing the envir­on­ment­al per­form­ance of such an innov­at­ive and pos­sibly game-chan­ging tech­no­logy.” The pre­lim­in­ary res­ults of the ana­lys­is accord­ing to the green­house gases emis­sions cal­cu­lat­or com­pli­ant with the Renew­able Energy Dir­ect­ive was that fully renew­able ETBE (Ethyl Tert-Butyl Eth­er), pro­duced from renew­able isob­utene and bioeth­an­ol, is asso­ci­ated with a reduc­tion of 69% of CO₂ equi­val­ent emis­sions if com­pared to fossil gas­ol­ine. These res­ults will have to be con­firmed after an audit on site and a peer review of the LCA. ETBE is today incor­por­ated in gas­ol­ine, up to 23%. Fully renew­able ETBE holds the poten­tial to incor­por­ate 2.7 times more renew­able energy in gas­ol­ine than using tra­di­tion­al bio­fuels. Bern­ard Chaud, Chief Industry Officer at Glob­al Bioen­er­gies and CEO of IBN-One, adds: ​“These res­ults are encour­aging and prom­ising with sug­ar beet as a sub­strate. With second gen­er­a­tion feed­stocks, such as wheat straw or wood-derived hydro­lys­ates, renew­able isob­utene deriv­at­ives are expec­ted to achieve an even high­er emis­sion reduc­tion”. Marc Del­court, CEO of Glob­al Bioen­er­gies, declares: ​“This is just the begin­ning of a new revolu­tion in the adop­tion of envir­on­ment­ally friendly liquid fuels. While the world is over­whelmed by news about elec­tric mobil­ity, it is import­ant to remind the pub­lic that sim­il­ar green­house gases emis­sions sav­ings can be achieved using advanced bio­fuels. Bio­fuels rep­res­ent a renew­able solu­tion that car­ries no com­prom­ise on car autonomy and requires no nation-scale infra­struc­ture expendit­ure.”. Source: Glob­al Bioen­er­gies S.A.