The role of electricity in decarbonizing European road transport – Development and assessment of an integrated multi-sectoral model

Abstract

Despite regulation efforts, CO 2 emissions from European road transport have continued to rise. Increased use of electricity offers a promising decarbonization option, both to fuel electric vehicles and run powerto-x systems producing synthetic fuels. To understand the economic implications of increased coupling of the road transport and electricity sectors, an integrated multi-sectoral partial-equilibrium investment and dispatch model is developed for the European electricity and road transport sectors, linked by an energy transformation module to endogenously account for, e.g., increasing electricity consumption and flexibility provision from electric vehicles and power-to-x systems. The model is applied to analyze the effects of sectorspecific CO 2 reduction targets on the vehicle, electricity and ptx technology mix as well as trade flows of ptx fuels in European countries from 2020 to 2050. The results show that, by 2050, the fuel shares of electricity and ptx fuels in the European road transport sector reach 37 % and 27 %, respectively, creating an additional electricity demand of 1200 TWh in Europe. To assess the added value of the integrated modeling approach, an additional analysis is performed in which all endogenous ties between sectors are removed. The results show that by decoupling the two sectors, the total system costs may be significantly overestimated and the production costs of ptx fuels may be inaccurately approximated, which may affect the merit order of decarbonization options.

The role of sector coupling in the green transition: A least-cost energy system development in North Europe towards 2050

“…Allowing competition for all these options is important to achieve a costeffective green transition. Previous studies do not optimise investments in, for instance, CCS units ( [6], [8], [9], [10], [11]), or transmission expansion [11].…”

“…Hedegaard [10] showed that electric cars with grid-to-vechicle and vehicle-to-grid facilitate larger wind power investments. Helgeson [11] illustrated the benefit of coupling and cooptimising the electricity and transport sectors, and Schiebahn [12] investigated the techno-economic feasibility of power-togas in a case study in Germany, concluding that the costs of the related technologies need to decrease to become attractive.…”

“…Therefore, the synergies across all these sectors can be identified. Previous studies lacked part of the system ( [6], [9], [10], [11]), or used a very low geographical representation [8]. By leaving out one or several sectors one might overestimate the importance of the one that is being modeled.…”

The Tax Incentives in the IVTM and “Eco-Friendly Cars”: The Spanish Case

“…The authors further pointed out that "it is a deception that European policy classified electric cars as zero emission vehicles." In relation to this last statement, there would be an increase in the production of electrical energy in Europe; according to [26], the "road transport sector [will drive] an additional electricity demand of 1200 TWh in EU in 2050," also ensuring that "the costs of production and replacement (of the fuel by electricity) have been wrongly calculated. "…”

Influence of Increasing Electrification of Passenger Vehicle Fleet on Carbon Dioxide Emissions in Finland

“…Another bottom-up approach is agent-based modeling, which is often highly complex and may involve many agent attributes but have been successfully used for evaluating the future market shares of electric vehicles [17]. The sector specific CO 2 reduction targets were evaluated with an integrated multi-sectoral model that combined the European electricity production and road transport [18]. The model enabled estimating the required share of electrified vehicles and increased electric energy demand in the future.…”