Integrated Approach for the Assessment of Strategies for the Decarbonization of Urban Traffic

Abstract

This paper presents a new methodology to derive and analyze strategies for a fully decarbonized urban transport system which combines conceptual vehicle design, a large-scale agent-based transport simulation, operational cost analysis, and life cycle assessment for a complete urban region. The holistic approach evaluates technical feasibility, system cost, energy demand, transportation time, and sustainability-related impacts of various decarbonization strategies. In contrast to previous work, the consequences of a transformation to fully decarbonized transport system scenarios are quantified across all traffic segments, considering procurement, operation, and disposal. The methodology can be applied to arbitrary regions and transport systems. Here, the metropolitan region of Berlin is chosen as a demonstration case. The first results are shown for a complete conversion of all traffic segments from conventional propulsion technology to battery electric vehicles. The transition of private individual traffic is analyzed regarding technical feasibility, energy demand and environmental impact. Commercial goods, municipal traffic and public transport are analyzed with respect to system cost and environmental impacts. We can show a feasible transition path for all cases with substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions. Based on current technologies and today’s cost structures our simulation shows a moderate increase in total systems cost of 13–18%.

Methodology for Estimating the Spatial and Temporal Power Demand of Private Electric Vehicles for an Entire Urban Region Using Open Data

“…In general, areas with high population density and a high vehicle per capita rate have a higher demand for electrical energy compared to sparsely populated areas with few vehicles per inhabitant [6,10,11]. The authors of [3,4,6,12] show that the electrical energy and power demand for charging BEVs differs depending on the time of the day and the type of the day In their research on decarbonisation of the urban traffic, the authors of [17] used the activity-based simulation framework MATSim [18,19] to analyse the effects of complete replacement of the current population of ICEVs with BEVs in urban regions. The authors focused on electrification of the entire transport system including private vehicles, the public transportation sector, and commercial and municipal traffic.…”

Analysis of Electric Moped Scooter Sharing in Berlin: A Technical, Economic and Environmental Perspective

“…To evaluate the economic impact for an e-moped sharing operator, a life cycle cost analysis in form of a total cost of ownership (TCO) is conducted according to the approach in [24]. The cost components and their values are based on literature research, real sharing operator data and well-founded calculations, while the trip data used for the TCO is generated by the sharing simulation.…”

Integrated Multidimensional Sustainability Assessment of Energy System Transformation Pathways

“…Such a comprehensive target provides new challenges from the extended system boundaries-sectoral, temporal and spatial. It is clear, however, that a multidimensional sustainability assessment of entire scenarios is also an important task if transformation pathways, which are sustainable in a broader sense, are to be developed [31][32][33][34]. A number of approaches to this have been developed and applied in the past: Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly combined with energy system models (see [15] for more references).…”