Renewable fuels for hard-to-abate transportation: Exploring the impact of biomass availability and variable renewable potentials

Decarbonising the hard-to-abate maritime and aviation transport sectors will be challenging. While alternative renewable fuels, such as biofuels and E-fuels, show promising potential for substituting traditional fossil fuels, they carry challenges regarding the required expansion of variable renewable energy (VRE) and the availability of sustainable biomass. This study assesses these challenges using a comprehensive sector-coupled energy system modelling framework applied to Europe. We show that biomass scarcity drives the composition of fuel types going from biofuels towards E-fuels as biomass availabilities decrease. Our results also show that regional accessibility to VRE resources influences hydrogen production and fuel trade between both countries and transport industries, highlighting the need for strategic regional planning. Our study furthermore provides critical insights for policymakers regarding the balancing of sustainable biomass utilisation, VRE deployments and infrastructure build-outs which are needed to achieve a decarbonised energy and transport sector.