Driving down the impact of extractive processes: better utilising our carbon

We are currently living through the twilight years of the car as we know it, with the sweeping tide of electrification set to bring an end to our love affair with the combustion engine. However, as with every transition, the electrification of vehicles and the phase out of conventional combustion engine designs will have a transition period. In this period, there will still be demand for oil.

When it comes to oil, the extractive process accounts for a significant amount of the overall impact of the material. In the ‘well-to-retail pump’ scenario, extractive processes account for around 50% of overall emissions and in the wider scope ‘well-to-wheels’ scenario, extraction still contributes around 16% of total emissions (based on data for California heavy oil from an IHS 2012 report). It is worth noting that, as would be expected, the majority of the carbon impact is tied up in the material. Being the Earth’s natural carbon sequestration, it is no surprise that fuel combustion accounts for around 70% of the ‘well-to-wheels’ impact. Still, this leaves a maximum 30% of the total emissions that we may have the opportunity to reduce.

When looking to reduce the impacts of the oil which we will need to use in the ‘weening off’ period, many turn away from petroleum and instead look to bio-sources, such as biodiesel. The issue with this is that it trades an extractive process…for an extractive process. All extractive processes come with their own set of environmental impacts. Farming of crops for biodiesel, which includes palm, corn and sugar, can have significant ecological impacts when conducted on a large scale. In the EU alone, 1.9 million tonnes of palm oil were added to diesel fuel in 2018. So, what is the other option? How do we both reduce carbon impacts and utilise more readily available materials to do so? Fortunately, there are recycling technologies (namely, modern lower temperature pyrolysis methods) that can convert one of the most publicised and widely known problematic waste streams, plastic, into diesel fuel oil. Given the amount of dirty mixed plastic waste that cannot be recycled into more plastic, or at least not for use in its original high value application (e.g. food packaging), utilisation as fuel could prove to be a suitable value retention strategy.

A key barrier to this at the present time is that, under the plastics pact, conversion into a fuel oil is not considered a form of recycling. This definition is intended to drive higher value recycling methods or even closed loop recycling, but is the reality that plastics which are difficult to deal with are being ignored, and ending up as waste? Not only would incentivising certain plastic waste (specifically that not suitable for higher value recycling) to be converted to fuel oil give more value to the waste, it would enable us to utilise the already embedded carbon of the material and give single-use a second life. This would also help to offset virgin oil and, crucially, the damaging extractive process.

Despite electrification plans for public transport and consumer vehicles, trucks and heavy industry vehicles will be run on diesel (mainly) for the foreseeable future. With the opportunity to help tackle a problematic waste stream, demand for diesel fuel remaining and the need to reduce carbon impacts, circular economic principles dictate that utilisation of materials in a second life, enabled by recycling technology, should be incentivised.