A decreasing reliance on oil for fuel will inevitably decrease the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere throughout the fuel’s lifecycle, from extraction and refining to combustion as it’s used by consumers.
A decreasing reliance on oil for fuel will inevitably decrease the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere throughout the fuel’s lifecycle, from extraction and refining to combustion as it’s used by consumers. However, the size of that impact varies depending on market factors that until now have not been fully modeled.
New research led by Adam Brandt, associate professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford University’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, and Mohammad Masnadi, assistant professor of chemical and petroleum engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, offers a closer look at the relationship between decreasing demand for oil and a resilient, varied oil market – and the carbon footprint associated with both. The study was published Nov. 3 in Nature.
“When oil demand drops due to, say, more rapid penetration of electric vehicles, our models find larger carbon benefits than earlier models,” said Brandt, who is also the director of Stanford’s Natural Gas Initiative. “Thus, it is likely that the carbon benefits of demand reduction measures and alternative vehicles have been underestimated.”
Read more at Stanford University
Photo Credit: ELG21 via Pixabay
