The role of transport electrification in global climate change mitigation scenarios

Abstract

Electrification is widely considered an attractive solution for reducing the oil dependency and environmental impact of road transportation. Many countries have been establishing increasingly stringent and ambitious targets in support of transport electrification. We conducted scenario simulations to depict the role of transport electrification in climate change mitigation and how the transport sector would interact with the energy-supply sector. The results showed that transport electrification without the replacement of fossil-fuel power plants leads to the unfortunate result of increasing emissions instead of achieving a low-carbon transition. While transport electrification alone would not contribute to climate change mitigation, it is interesting to note that switching to electrified road transport under the sustainable shared socioeconomic pathways permitted an optimistic outlook for a low-carbon transition, even in the absence of a decarbonized power sector. Another interesting finding was that the stringent penetration of electric vehicles can reduce the mitigation cost generated by the 2°C climate stabilization target, implying a positive impact for transport policies on the economic system. With technological innovations such as electrified road transport, climate change mitigation does not have to occur at the expense of economic growth. Because a transport electrification policy closely interacts with energy and economic systems, transport planners, economists, and energy policymakers need to work together to propose policy schemes that consider a cross-sectoral balance for a green sustainable future.

Energy Poverty and Low Carbon Just Energy Transition: Comparative Study in Lithuania and Greece

“…Consequently, it was claimed that climate actions are not systematic and the costs of required actions are too high in relation to capacities to bear these costs (Bos & Gupta, 2019 ; Jewell & Cherp, 2020 ). Therefore, Lazarou et al ( 2018 ), Kang et al ( 2020 ) and Zhang and Fujimori ( 2020 ) suggest additional actions as necessary to ensure technological innovation which is due to optimal technology portfolio selection along with financial and political incentives. In addition, early investments in climate change mitigation in middle-income countries need to be ensured (Colenbrander et al, 2016 ) as these will experience many problems (Bos & Gupta, 2019 ).…”

Demand-side decarbonization and electrification: EMF 35 JMIP study

“…It is also important to note that reducing emission intensity of electricity is a prerequisite for mitigation through electrification (Zhang and Fujimori 2020). In the 26by30 + 80by50_Def scenario, the model results show the emission intensity of electricity sharply decreases from 2040 to 2050, but a lock-in mechanism also applies to the supply sector.…”

“…Notably, among clean energy carriers, numerous studies show that a transition to electricity by the demand-side plays a pivotal role in large-scale CO 2 reduction of all demand sectors on a global, national and urban scale (Sugiyama 2012;Williams et al 2012;Wei et al 2013, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2014; Quiggin and Buswell 2016;Raghavan et al 2017;IPCC 2018;Fortes et al 2019;Hill et al 2019;Luh et al 2020;Zhang and Fujimori 2020).…”

Sustainable Use of the Catenary by Trolleybuses with Auxiliary Power Sources on the Example of Gdynia

“…The nearly 300 existing trolleybus systems worldwide are a relatively small number [27]. Scientific research concerns particular policies in the field of urban electric transport development, including trolleybuses [10,15,[28][29][30][31], comparative studies of the development of various means of public transport, including trolleybuses [21,[32][33][34] and the impact of means of transport on the environment, in particular, greenhouse gas emissions, CO 2 and other harmful substances [28,[35][36][37][38][39]. Few studies concern technical issues, including trolleybus drives [40][41][42], power supply infrastructure and catenary [43], vehicle development [19,20,44,45] and technical facilities [46].…”