According to a new study at the University of Sao Paolo in Brazil, if sugar cane is used as the feedstock to produce ethanol and electricity for the same final use then only four per cent of the world’s available cropland area would be needed to power a global fleet of hybrid and electric cars.
As part of their study, the researchers assessed the benefits and drawbacks of the joint production in a sugar cane based biorefinery and their findings suggest the amount of land required to power current vehicle needs is less than what is typically stated.
They looked at utilising a sugar cane mill for energy production; and a hybrid car powered by an internal combustion engine that consumes ethanol with an efficiency of 35mpg. They assume the fuel performance of the ethanol engine is 75 per cent of a petrol powered engine and that the average yield of a sugar cane plantation is 85 tonnes per hectare with 90litres of ethanol produced per tonne of sugar cane.
According to the researchers, if all automobiles are replaced by electric vehicles then 697TWh/year would be needed to power the entire fleet in theUSand 60TWh/year for Brazil. These are modest values compared to the present electricity use in both countries and if both ethanol and bioelectricity are used in an optimised proportion then 385billion litres of ethanol and 262TWh of electricity would be enough to power the fleet in the USA.
This equates to a US fleet consisting of 143million hybrid and 86million electric vehicles.
