Institute of Environmental Sciences, P.O. Box 9518, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
Environ Sci Technol. 2014 Jun 17;48(12):7111-21. doi: 10.1021/es500191g. Epub 2014 May 30.
Within the context of carbon dioxide (CO2) utilization there is an increasing interest in using CO2 as a resource to produce sustainable liquid hydrocarbon fuels. When these fuels are produced by solely using solar energy they are labeled as solar fuels. In the recent discourse on solar fuels intuitive arguments are used to support the prospects of these fuels. This paper takes a quantitative approach to investigate some of the claims made in this discussion. We analyze the life cycle performance of various classes of solar fuel processes using different primary energy and CO2 sources. We compare their efficacy with respect to carbon mitigation with ubiquitous fossil-based fuels and conclude that producing liquid hydrocarbon fuels starting from CO2 by using existing technologies requires much more energy than existing fuels. An improvement in life cycle CO2 emissions is only found when solar energy and atmospheric CO2 are used. Producing fuels from CO2 is a very long-term niche at best, not the panacea suggested in the recent public discourse.
在二氧化碳（CO2）利用的背景下，人们越来越感兴趣地将 CO2 作为一种资源来生产可持续的液态碳氢燃料。当这些燃料仅通过太阳能生产时，它们被标记为太阳能燃料。在最近关于太阳能燃料的讨论中，人们使用直观的论据来支持这些燃料的前景。本文采用定量方法来研究讨论中的一些说法。我们使用不同的一次能源和 CO2 来源分析了各种类别的太阳能燃料工艺的生命周期性能。我们将它们的减碳效果与普遍存在的基于化石的燃料进行了比较，并得出结论，从 CO2 开始使用现有技术生产液态碳氢燃料所需的能源比现有燃料多得多。只有当使用太阳能和大气 CO2 时，生命周期 CO2 排放才会得到改善。从 CO2 生产燃料充其量只是一个非常长期的利基市场，而不是最近公众讨论中所暗示的灵丹妙药。
