Fuels
The Transportation Annual Technology Baseline (ATB) provides price or cost, production, and emissions estimates for selected fuels in four categories:
- On-Road Fuels, including ethanol, petro- and bio-based diesel fuel, natural gas, electricity, and hydrogen
- Blendstocks, including ethanol, blendstock for oxygenate blending, and biofuel blendstock
- Aviation Fuels, including conventional jet fuel and synthetic aviation fuel
- Marine Fuels, including conventional heavy fuel oil and bio-based marine fuel.
Natural gas, electricity, and hydrogen are presented in the On-Road Fuels category, whereas petroleum-based fuels and biofuels are presented in each of these fuel categories. The supply curve costs and quantities for fuels and biomass resources are not presented in the ATB.
Diverse types of data are presented. Some fuel production pathways represent today's commercially available fuels, where data are available on market prices for fuels that have high production volume. These are called "current market" data. Other data are estimated fuel costs for current or future fuel production technologies and may represent low or high volumes of production. These are called "future modeled" data. A label of "current modeled" is used where empirical data are used to validate a model of current conditions. In some cases, blendstock data are more readily accessible than fuel data.
Fuel is directly used in a vehicle, whereas blendstock is one component of a fuel. Fuel price data include taxes for all fuels currently taxed, whereas blendstock data do not include taxes. The price shown for a single fuel pathway may differ by fuel types or application because of different tax and distribution costs. Data for biofuels and hydrogen come from U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory analyses; data for petroleum-based fuels and conventional electricity sources come from other sources, primarily the U.S. Energy Information Administration. "Fuel Price" is presented on a gasoline gallon equivalent (gge) basis for all fuels; other relevant units are also presented where relevant (i.e., diesel gallon equivalent [dge], kilowatt-hours [kWh], and kilograms [kg]). All costs are converted to 2024 dollars using the gross domestic product implicit price deflator (FRED and U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2025).
In the 2025 Transportation ATB, multiple single-point estimates of fuel metrics are provided in each case, and they are not associated with a particular year. However, the absence of time-series trajectories does not imply fuel prices will be constant over this period.