Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- The Contributors
- 1 Overview of Singapore's Energy Situation
- 2 Singapore's Changing Landscapes in Energy
- 3 Singapore's Role as a Key Oil Trading Centre in Asia
- 4 Large-Scale Solar PV Power Generation in Urban High-Rise Buildings in Singapore
- 5 The High-Carbon Story of Urban Development in Southeast Asia
- 6 Renewable Energy and the Environment: Technology and Economic Perspectives
- 7 Delivering Results in a Booming Rig Market
- 8 The Success Story of Rig Building in Singapore
- 9 The Singapore Oil Situation
- 10 Singapore Petroleum Company: Adding Value to the Singapore Oil Industry
- 11 Oil Storage: The Singapore Story
- REGIONAL and INTERNATIONAL
- 12 The Outlook for Energy: A View to 2030
- 13 India's Energy Situation: The Need to Secure Energy Resources in an Increasingly Competitive Environment
- 14 The Implications and Impacts of China's Oil Demand on the Asia Pacific
- 15 Energy Security Cooperation in Asia: An ASEAN-SCO Energy Partnership?
- 16 China's Energy Security: Geo-politics versus Interdependence
- 17 The Strategic Challenges for the United States and China in Global Energy Supply
- 18 China's Coal: Curse or Blessing
- 19 Japan's New Energy Strategy
- 20 Who Wins in the Asian Scramble for Oil?
- 21 New Horizons for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) East of Suez
- 22 Bio and Synthetic Fuels: An Alternative for Sustainable Mobility
- 23 Price Discovery for Middle East Refined Product Exports: A Natural Role for Dubai
- 24 The Outlook for Gas in Southeast Asia
- 25 Sakhalin-2 Project, a New Energy Source for the Asia Pacific: History in the Making
- Index
22 - Bio and Synthetic Fuels: An Alternative for Sustainable Mobility
from REGIONAL and INTERNATIONAL
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- The Contributors
- 1 Overview of Singapore's Energy Situation
- 2 Singapore's Changing Landscapes in Energy
- 3 Singapore's Role as a Key Oil Trading Centre in Asia
- 4 Large-Scale Solar PV Power Generation in Urban High-Rise Buildings in Singapore
- 5 The High-Carbon Story of Urban Development in Southeast Asia
- 6 Renewable Energy and the Environment: Technology and Economic Perspectives
- 7 Delivering Results in a Booming Rig Market
- 8 The Success Story of Rig Building in Singapore
- 9 The Singapore Oil Situation
- 10 Singapore Petroleum Company: Adding Value to the Singapore Oil Industry
- 11 Oil Storage: The Singapore Story
- REGIONAL and INTERNATIONAL
- 12 The Outlook for Energy: A View to 2030
- 13 India's Energy Situation: The Need to Secure Energy Resources in an Increasingly Competitive Environment
- 14 The Implications and Impacts of China's Oil Demand on the Asia Pacific
- 15 Energy Security Cooperation in Asia: An ASEAN-SCO Energy Partnership?
- 16 China's Energy Security: Geo-politics versus Interdependence
- 17 The Strategic Challenges for the United States and China in Global Energy Supply
- 18 China's Coal: Curse or Blessing
- 19 Japan's New Energy Strategy
- 20 Who Wins in the Asian Scramble for Oil?
- 21 New Horizons for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) East of Suez
- 22 Bio and Synthetic Fuels: An Alternative for Sustainable Mobility
- 23 Price Discovery for Middle East Refined Product Exports: A Natural Role for Dubai
- 24 The Outlook for Gas in Southeast Asia
- 25 Sakhalin-2 Project, a New Energy Source for the Asia Pacific: History in the Making
- Index
Summary
Bio-fuels are not new. They have been around for more than thirty years starting with Brazil's ethanol programme and France's bio-diesel from rapeseed initiative in the early 1990s. Nevertheless, recent developments have accelerated the development of alternative fuels and their application on a global basis, and Southeast Asia is no exception to this trend.
This chapter seeks to offer a broad understanding of bio-fuels in terms of their types, production processes, current usage, and their advantages and problems in relation to crude fossil fuels. The chapter will explore how oil and bio-fuel industries have improved production processes to pave the way for a new generation of bio-fuels, such as synthetic fuels. It will argue that the focus in developing bio-fuels needs to be on the sustainability of alternative energy resources, and that this is possible only if the growth in cultivation of bio-mass for fuel does not cause damage to eco-systems and competition with food production is prevented as far as possible. It will also stress the importance of employing the right tools to evaluate the efficacy of bio-fuels, and will stress the utility of the well-to-wheel analysis in this regard.
SETTING THE SCENE
The twentieth century was the golden age of mobility. The transport of both people and freight shifted rapidly from being manual to mechanical — automobiles, trains, ships, buses and planes have come to dominate the way the people and materials move. The rapidity of transport development over the twentieth century will however not be replicated over the next twenty to thirty years. While there will not be any step-changes in the evolution of transport fuels, we will see a rise in the use of new fuels in the future, such as naphtha/methanol and hydrogen. Gaseous fuels will also be increasingly used but they will remain niche fuels. Liquid fuels will remain the dominant fuels over the next two to three decades, and the character of transport engines will not undergo any fundamental transformations.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Energy Perspectives on Singapore and the Region , pp. 285 - 306Publisher: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak InstitutePrint publication year: 2007