Life cycle assessment of gasoline in Indonesia

In the Indonesian transportation sector, gasoline is the most consumed fuel; in 2008 it accounted for 60% of the total fuel consumption in transportation. Increasing concern regarding environmental issues, particularly urban air quality, makes the utilization of gasoline in transport a crucial aspect to be analyzed. However, besides tailpipe emissions, there are many upstream processes when producing gasoline which need to be evaluated in terms of impacts to the environment.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used as a tool for the assessment of resource consumption and associated impacts generated from utilization of gasoline in the transportation sector including crude oil extraction, oil refining and the use of gasoline in car. The impact categories considered are global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP), abiotic resource depletion potential (ADP), human toxicity potential (HTP), and ecotoxicity potential (ETP).

The results show that for global warming, gasoline combustion during end use contributes 93% of the total. The second largest contributor to GWP is oil refining (5%) followed by crude oil extraction (2%). In AP, combustion plays a significant role too with a contribution of 84%, followed by refining with 13% and crude oil extraction with 2%. The most significant process contributing to EP is once again gasoline combustion (95%) and the second contributor is the refining stage (4%), while transport contributes only 1%. For abiotic resource depletion on the other hand, almost 100% of the impact is from crude oil extraction. For HTP, the refining stage plays a very significant role to the life cycle of gasoline contributing 99.6%, whereas for ETP it is refining (62%) and extraction (38%).

Using gasoline as transport fuel indicates that gasoline combustion is predominantly responsible for GWP, AP and EP whilst ADP is dominated by crude oil extraction stage and refinery is mainly responsible for human toxicity and ecotoxicity potential,

The result of this study can be used as an overview for gasoline production and to compare with other transportation fuel options in Indonesia.