Emission Impacts of Electric Vehicles in the US Transportation Sector Following Optimistic Cost and Efficiency Projections

Abstract

This study investigates emission impacts of introducing inexpensive and efficient electric vehicles into the US light duty vehicle (LDV) sector. Scenarios are explored using the ANSWER-MARKAL model with a modified version of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) 9-region database. Modified cost and performance projections for LDV technologies are adapted from the National Research Council (2013) optimistic case. Under our optimistic scenario (OPT) we find 15% and 47% adoption of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in 2030 and 2050, respectively. In contrast, gasoline vehicles (ICEVs) remain dominant through 2050 in the EPA reference case (BAU). Compared to BAU, OPT gives 16% and 36% reductions in LDV greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for 2030 and 2050, respectively, corresponding to 5% and 9% reductions in economy-wide emissions. Total nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and SO emissions are similar in the two scenarios due to intersectoral shifts. Moderate, economy-wide GHG fees have little effect on GHG emissions from the LDV sector but are more effective in the electricity sector. In the OPT scenario, estimated well-to-wheels GHG emissions from full-size BEVs with 100-mile range are 62 gCO-e mi in 2050, while those from full-size ICEVs are 121 gCO-e mi.

Estimating criteria pollutant emissions using the California Regional Multisector Air Quality Emissions (CA-REMARQUE) model v1.0

“…More recent studies addressing interactions between climate policies, emissions, and air quality in the US (Keshavarzmohammadian et al, 2017;Loughlin et al, 2011;Ran et al, 2015;Rudokas et al, 2015;Zhang et al, 2016) have allocated future emissions using enhanced population surrogates (Ran et al, 2015) and federal climate policies . The current study builds on this previous work to explicitly account for California's ambitious climate regulations broken down into detailed sectors including realistic siting of biofuel facilities.…”

Review of the United States energy system in transition

“…This would reduce total projected emissions in 2050 by 29% (2) The rate of in electrification of vehicles ("Transportation" section). An estimate by Keshavarzmohammadian and colleagues [204] finds that a BEV penetration of the light vehicle new sales market of 15% and 47% in 2030 and 2050 would reduce economy-wide emissions by 5% and 9% respectively compared to Business as Usual.…”

Optimizing the Chinese Electricity Mix for CO2 Emission Reduction: An Input–Output Linear Programming Model with Endogenous Capital

“…Most ESOMs are based on bottom-up data and can be accordingly called bottom-up ESOMs; these include, for example, MARKAL (MARKet and ALlocation) family models. To date, MARKAL family models have been extensively applied for energy and environmental policy analysis in many countries, e.g., China, − Japan, Korea, US, − UK, and Sweden . Apart from that, bottom-up ESOMs have also been largely used for electricity system planning. − The advantage of bottom-up ESOMs is that they usually include a great deal of technological details of the energy system and are able to identify very specific technological options and the associated investments and fuel costs.…”