This is a follow-up to our earlier report, “Need for higher fuel standards in Asia”, from March 2014.

The conclusions of the report can certainly be applied to other countries in the Asian community and will lead to similar results.

Measures undertaken to tackle the energy/environmental problem

During this time of increasing concerns about global warming, rising energy prices and the demand surge in developing countries for automobiles and petroleum products, Japan has taken the following political and legislative measures to mitigate and solve these issues:

- Introduction of CO2 reduction targets and emission counter measurements, ensuring energy supply security, development of alternative energy programs, energy conservation programs and incentives

The petroleum and automobile industry have responded with:

- Reducing CO2 emission from refining processes (stationary sources), introduction of biofuels, capital investment in energy efficiency enhancements, launch of next-generation automobiles with a significant improvement in fuel economy and emission control measurements

One of the frequently discussed and recommended measurements derived from the above mentioned initiatives is to improve transportation fuel efficiency by upgrading regular gasoline to 95 RON and above.

The study highlights the following findings:

- Fuel efficiency improvements

The chart below shows how the octane boost will enhance the compression ratio of an engine, which leads to fuel economy improvements. (Source: JAMA)

In 2012 the market share in Japan for regular gasoline (90 RON) was 84.5% and for premium gasoline (100 RON) was 15.5%. In Europe the gasoline market was divided into 91 RON: 8%, 95 RON: 87.6% and 98 RON: 4.4%, making the average gasoline RON in Japan 91.6 RON and in Europe 94.8 RON, a difference of 3.2 percentage points.

According to the study, fuel efficiency will improve by 2-8% by upgrading regular gasoline to 95 RON premium gasoline with up to 8% for supercharged engines and 2-4% for conventional engines (due to compression ratio increase, ignition time optimization and CVT shift point optimization). The share of turbo engine cars in Japan was 11.5% in 2013 and is expected to gradually increase to 32% by 2019.

Fuel economy gained for octane upgrade from 90 to 95 RON for in-use vehicles.

With the higher market penetration of turbo engines, which is part of the boosted downsizing initiative, the study predicts that the country’s gasoline consumption can be reduced from 44 million metric tons per year (MT/y) to approximately 36 million MT/y or 18%.

The next chart is a simplified refinery flow chart that shows the different sources of gasoline and octane. Octane can come from different sources. Sources of non-refinery octane are widely available and can be blended into the pool.

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