Transportation Energy Futures Series: Alternative Fuel Infrastructure Expansion: Costs, Resources, Production Capacity, and Retail Availability for Low-Carbon Scenarios

Abstract

This is one of a series of reports produced as a result of the Transportation Energy Futures (TEF) project, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-sponsored multi-agency project initiated to identify underexplored strategies for abating greenhouse gases (GHG) and reducing petroleum dependence related to transportation. The project was designed to consolidate existing transportation energy knowledge, advance analytic capacity-building, and uncover opportunities for sound strategic action. Transportation currently accounts for 71% of total U.S. petroleum use and 33% of the nation's total carbon emissions. The TEF project explores how combining multiple strategies could reduce GHG emissions and petroleum use by 80%. Researchers examined four key areas-lightduty vehicles, non-light-duty vehicles, fuels, and transportation demand-in the context of the marketplace, consumer behavior, industry capabilities, technology and the energy and transportation infrastructure. The TEF reports support DOE long-term planning. The reports provide analysis to inform decisions about transportation energy research investments, as well as the role of advanced transportation energy technologies and systems in the development of new physical, strategic, and policy alternatives. In addition to the DOE and its Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, TEF benefitted from the collaboration of experts from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, along with steering committee members from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Transportation, academic institutions and industry associations. More detail on the project, as well as the full series of reports, can be found at http://www.eere.energy.gov/analysis/transportationenergyfutures.

A critical review of global decarbonization scenarios: what do they tell us about feasibility?

“…Transitions to alternative liquid or gaseous fuels such as ethanol or hydrogen will require new production, storage, and distribution systems, with major infrastructure implications. According to NREL, the expansion of the retail infrastructure for alternative fuels may pose greater issues than fuel costs, resources, or production capacity …”

Toward a Low-Carbon Transport Sector in Mexico

“…Consequently, this review considered the following four country studies with ambitious mitigation scenarios in the transport sector: USA [4], China [5], India [6] and Germany [7]. The proposed mitigation measures of these four studies are diverse and have high potential for reducing GHG emissions.…”

National Hydrogen Scenarios: How Many Stations, Where, and When?

“…Based on the analytic approach used to develop the California Fuel Cell Partnership Roadmap (see Section 2), a certain number of market activation stations must be installed before OEMs will begin unique dealership outreach and marketing of FCEVs, allowing them to be sold in large volumes into a given urban area. The coverage of activation stations must enable most early adopters to live within a 6-minute drive of a station (Nicholas et al 2004;Melaina et al 2013;CaFCP 2014;Brown et al 2015). This approach tends to result in one or more activation stations being clustered in neighborhoods with high concentrations of early adopters.…”