Greenhouse Gas Emission Mitigation Pathways for Urban Passenger Land Transport under Ambitious Climate Targets

The political price of superblocks. Electoral outcomes of sustainable transport interventions in Barcelona

Urban and transportation policies are increasingly recognized for their potential to mitigate climate change impacts and address transport externalities. Amidst efforts to shift modal preferences and reduce transport emissions, cities are turning to spatialbased policies, such as Superblocks, to reshape urban mobility. This research examines the electoral outcomes associated with the implementation of Superblocks in Barcelona, focusing on their impact on political support for Barcelona en Comú (BEC) during the local elections of 2015 and 2023. Utilizing a combination of adjusted difference-in-differences and propensity score matching methods, we assessed the public's electoral response to the Superblock initiative amidst a backdrop of declining city-wide support for BEC. Our findings reveal that Superblock areas demonstrated significantly stronger support for BEC, suggesting a political premium for the party responsible for these urban interventions. Specifically, electoral support in Superblock districts saw an increase of 10-14% compared to the rest of the city. This result highlights the potential of urban transformation policies to influence political preferences locally and potentially validate the use of local electoral data as a tool for evaluating public response to highly contested urban policies.

Trade-Offs between Direct Emission Reduction and Intersectoral Additional Emissions: Evidence from the Electrification Transition in China's Transport Sector

Electrifying the transport sector is crucial for reducing CO2 emissions and achieving Paris Agreement targets. This largely depends on rapid decarbonization in power plants; however, we often overlook the trade-offs between reduced transportation emissions and additional energy-supply sector emissions induced by electrification. Here, we developed a framework for China's transport sector, including analyzing driving factors of historical CO2 emissions, collecting energy-related parameters of numerous vehicles based on the field- investigation, and assessing the energy-environment impacts of electrification policies with national heterogeneity. We find holistic electrification in China's transport sector will cause substantial cumulative CO2 emission reduction (2025-2075), equivalent to 19.8-42% of global annual emissions, but with a 2.2-16.1 GtCO2 net increase considering the additional emissions in energy-supply sectors. It also leads to a 5.1- to 6.7-fold increase in electricity demand, and the resulting CO2 emissions far surpass the emission reduction achieved. Only under 2 and 1.5 °C scenarios, forcing further decarbonization in the energy supply sectors, will the holistic electrification of transportation have a robust mitigation effect, -2.5 to -7.0 Gt and -6.4 to -11.3 Gt net-negative emissions, respectively. Therefore, we conclude that electrifying the transport sector cannot be a one-size-fits-all policy, requiring synergistically decarbonization efforts in the energy-supply sectors.

The effect of sustainable mobility transition policies on cumulative urban transport emissions and energy demand

The growing urban transport sector presents towns and cities with an escalating challenge in the reduction of their greenhouse gas emissions. Here we assess the effectiveness of several widely considered policy options (electrification, light-weighting, retrofitting, scrapping, regulated manufacturing standards and modal shift) in achieving the transition to sustainable urban mobility in terms of their emissions and energy impact until 2050. Our analysis investigates the severity of actions needed to comply with Paris compliant regional sub-sectoral carbon budgets. We introduce the Urban Transport Policy Model (UTPM) for passenger car fleets and use London as an urban case study to show that current policies are insufficient to meet climate targets. We conclude that, as well as implementation of emission-reducing changes in vehicle design, a rapid and large-scale reduction in car use is necessary to meet stringent carbon budgets and avoid high energy demand. Yet, without increased consensus in sub-national and sectoral carbon budgets, the scale of reduction necessary stays uncertain. Nevertheless, it is certain we need to act urgently and intensively across all policy mechanisms available as well as developing new policy options.

Characterizing the particle number emissions of light-duty gasoline vehicles under different engine technologies and driving conditions

Vehicle particle number (PN) emissions have attracted increasing public attention due to their severe influence on human health. In this study, we selected 35 light-duty gasoline vehicles (LDGVs) with gasoline direct injection (GDI) and multi-port fuel injection (MPFI) engines to elucidate the main factors influencing PN emissions. Via real driving emission (RDE) and chassis dynamometer tests, we quantified the impact of engine technology, emission standards, engine-start conditions and engine load on vehicle PN emissions. The RDE test results indicated that GDI vehicles generated higher PN emissions than those of MPFI vehicles under hot-running conditions. MPFI vehicle PN emissions were greatly affected by rapidly changing driving conditions, especially vehicles equipped with automatic start-stop systems. In regard to China 6 GDI vehicles equipped with a gasoline particle filter (GPF), their PN emissions were usually low, and peak PN emissions could mainly be attributed to GPF regeneration. Engine manufacturers should optimize GPF regeneration conditions to further reduce particulate emissions. Furthermore, the analysis results of PN emissions for different road types indicated that PN emissions were related to vehicle driving conditions. The vehicle specific power (VSP) could be used as an important explanatory variable to characterize the PN emission rate when distinguishing different engine technologies and emission standards. A real-world LDGV VSP-based PN emission rate was suggested based on the RDE test dataset. The VSP-based emission rate could be considered to more accurately quantify vehicle PN emissions and support the formulation of urban vehicle particle emission control policies.

Comparing the levelized cost of electric vehicle charging options in Europe

With rapidly decreasing purchase prices of electric vehicles, charging costs are becoming ever more important for the diffusion of electric vehicles as required to decarbonize transport. However, the costs of charging electric vehicles in Europe are largely unknown. Here we develop a systematic classification of charging options, gather extensive market data on equipment cost, and employ a levelized cost approach to model charging costs in 30 European countries (European Union 27, Great Britain, Norway, Switzerland) and for 13 different charging options for private passenger transport. The findings demonstrate a large variance of charging costs across countries and charging options, suggesting different policy options to reduce charging costs. A specific analysis on the impacts and relevance of publicly accessible charging station utilization is performed. The results reveal charging costs at these stations to be competitive with fuel costs at typical utilization rates exhibited already today.

Charging costs are important for the diffusion of electric vehicles as required to decarbonize transport. Here, the authors show large variance of electrical vehicle charging costs across 30 European countries and charging options, suggesting different policy options to reduce charging costs.

Minimum-Cost Fast-Charging Infrastructure Planning for Electric Vehicles along the Austrian High-Level Road Network

Given the ongoing transformation of the transport sector toward electrification, expansion of the current charging infrastructure is essential to meet future charging demands. The lack of fast-charging infrastructure along highways and motorways is a particular obstacle for long-distance travel with battery electric vehicles (BEVs). In this context, we propose a charging infrastructure allocation model that allocates and sizes fast-charging stations along high-level road networks while minimizing the costs for infrastructure investment. The modeling framework is applied to the Austrian highway and motorway network, and the needed expansion of the current fast-charging infrastructure in place is modeled under different future scenarios for 2030. Within these, the share of BEVs in the car fleet, developments in BEV technology and road traffic load changing in the face of future modal shift effects are altered. In particular, we analyze the change in the requirements for fast-charging infrastructure in response to enhanced driving range and growing BEV fleets. The results indicate that improvements in the driving range of BEVs will have limited impact and hardly affect future costs of the expansion of the fast-charging infrastructure. On the contrary, the improvements in the charging power of BEVs have the potential to reduce future infrastructure costs.