Regular readers will recall that I relied heavily upon the braniacs at Carnegie Mellon Institute when I was evaluating the carbon footprint of various bicycle frame and sleeping mattress materials. In both instances, I utilized Carnegie Mellon University's Green Design Institute Economic Input-Output Lifecycle Assessment Tool.

Recently, I stumbled upon a story on Treehugger that referenced the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center, which  just issued a report that concludes:

For energy security and greenhouse gas reductions, plugin hybrids provide a more sensible pathway than coal-to-liquids gasoline.

The Electricity Industry Center uses a similar approach to lifecycle analysis as the Green Design Institute's Lifecycle Assessment Tool.

A life cycle approach is used so that all stages of the life cycle of each fuel, from production to use, are included. This analysis allows us to better identify benefits, or disadvantages, of an energy future that includes coal as a transportation fuel.

Here a summary of the analysis:

Gasoline derived from CTL (coal-to-liquid)  plants with no CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) could increase GHG emissions from vehicles by almost 60%. If CCS is available, then a reduction of less than 6% could be obtained. It is important to note, once again, that in this best-case CTL scenario, not only is there CCS at the CTL plant, but also a low-carbon electricity source is used for CTL production. This might not be a very realistic assumption, but is presented here to show that at best we could only obtain a very small reduction in GHG emissions following a path of increased CTL production.

Plug-in hybrids look more promising as a pathway for reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Even if coal electricity without carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is used, plug-in hybrids could lead to a GHG emissions reduction of almost 25%. This demonstrates the worst case for plug-in hybrids, as GHGs would be further reduced with a low-carbon electricity portfolio.\

This is admittedly pretty dry and dense stuff, as stats can be. But it's good to know that the folks at Carnegie Mellon are thoroughly analyzing the many choices that are being bandied about.

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