Cost-effective vehicle and fuel technology choices in a carbon constrained world: insights from global energy systems modelling

Book chapter, 2010

There is no abstract to this Elsevier book chapter. Here is instead our Discussion/Conclusion chapter: The goal of this work was to investigate the factors influencing the cost-effective vehicle and fuel technology choices in a carbon constrained world. We approached this goal by further developing an existing global energy systems model with the most important addition being a more detailed description of light-duty vehicle technologies (GET RC 6.1). The model is not intended to provide a forecast of the future, but it does provide insight into the system behavior. We have shown how CCS and CSP, technological options that have the potential to significantly reduce CO2 emissions associated with electricity and heat generation, may affect cost-effective fuel and vehicle technologies for transport. We find that the availability of CCS and CSP have substantial impacts on the fuel and technology options for passenger vehicles in meeting global CO2 emission target of 450 ppm at lowest system cost. Four key findings emerge. First, the introduction of CCS increases, in general, the use of coal (in the energy system) and ICEV (for transport). By providing relatively low-cost approaches to reducing CO2 emissions associated with electricity and heat generation, CCS reduces the “CO2 task” for the transportation sector, extends the time span of conventional petroleum-fueled ICEVs, and enables the use of liquid biofuels as well as GTL/CTL for transportation. Second, the introduction of CSP reduces the relative cost of electricity in relation to hydrogen and tends to increase the use of electricity for transport (at the expense of hydrogen). Third, the combined introduction of both CCS and CSP reduces the cost-effectiveness of shifting away from petroleum and ICEVs for a prolonged period of time (e.g., compare the results in Figure X.2D with those in Figure X.2A). Advanced energy technologies (CCS and CSP) reduce the cost of carbon mitigation (in the model) and therefore the incentives to shift to more advanced vehicle technologies. Fourth, the cost estimates for future vehicle technologies are very uncertain (for the time span considered) and therefore it is too early to express firm opinions about the future cost-effectiveness or optimality of different fuel and powertrain combinations. Sensitivity analyses in which these parameters were varied over reasonable ranges result in large differences in the cost-effective fuel and vehicle technology solutions. For instance, for low battery costs ($150/kWh) electrified powertrains dominate and for higher battery costs ($450/kWh) hydrogen-fueled vehicles dominate, regardless of CCS and CSP availability. Thus, our results summarized above should not be interpreted to mean that the electricity production options alone will have a decisive impact on the cost-effective fuel and vehicle options chosen. General results on cost-effective primary energy choices include observations that the use of coal increases substantially when CCS is available and that the use of solar energy (mainly solar-based hydrogen) increases when neither CCS nor CSP are available. Our findings have several policy and research implications. From a policy perspective, the findings highlight the need to recognize, and account for, the interaction between sectors (e.g., that illustrated by the impact of CCS availability in the present work) in policy development. From a research perspective, the findings illustrate the importance of pursuing the research and development of multiple fuel and vehicle technology pathways to achieve the desired result of affordable and sustainable personal mobility.