Electrification of transportation means a lot more than a lot more electric vehicles.

A hidden barrier to the electrification of transportation is a lack of recognition of what it implies. Although the increasing popularity of battery electric vehicles (BEV) is heartening, the replacement of all personal vehicles with BEV would reduce US transportation emissions of CO2 by only about half. Aircraft and many ground vehicles are difficult or impossible to electrify. In meeting the "electrification challenge," electricity is a medium for delivering fossil-carbon-free energy in a form suitable for each application whether mobile or stationary. This article synthesizes data from multiple sources to estimate how much biomass and GHG-free electricity will be needed to achieve carbon-neutrality in the US by 2050. Although subject to assumptions for growth and innovation, the resulting need for almost four times the electricity we use today and over 150 billion gallons per year of hydrocarbon fuel and feedstock are so striking as to provide meaningful policy guidance.

Economic and Climate Benefits of Electric Vehicles in China, the United States, and Germany.

Mass adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is widely viewed as essential to address climate change and requires a compelling case for ownership worldwide. While the manufacturing costs and technical capabilities of EVs are similar across regions, customer needs and economic contexts vary widely. Assessments of the all-electric-range required to cover day-to-day driving demand, and the climate and economic benefits of EVs, need to account for differences in regional characteristics and individual travel patterns. To meet this need travel profiles for 1681 light-duty passenger vehicles in China, the U.S., and Germany were used to make the first consistent multiregional comparison of customer and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission benefits of EVs. We show that despite differences in fuel prices, driving patterns, and subsidies, the economic benefits/challenges of EVs are generally similar across regions. Individuals who are economically most likely to adopt EVs have GHG benefits that are substantially greater than for average drivers. Such "priority" EV customers have large (32%-63%) reductions in cradle-to-grave GHG emissions. It is shown that low battery costs (below approximately $100/kWh) and a portfolio of EV offerings are required for mass adoption of electric vehicles.

Vehicle emissions of short-lived and long-lived climate forcers: trends and tradeoffs.

Evaluating technology options to mitigate the climate impacts of road transportation can be challenging, particularly when they involve a tradeoff between long-lived emissions (e.g., carbon dioxide) and short-lived emissions (e.g., methane or black carbon). Here we present trends in short- and long-lived emissions for light- and heavy-duty transport globally and in the U.S., EU, and China over the period 2000-2030, and we discuss past and future changes to vehicle technologies to reduce these emissions. We model the tradeoffs between short- and long-lived emission reductions across a range of technology options, life cycle emission intensities, and equivalency metrics. While short-lived vehicle emissions have decreased globally over the past two decades, significant reductions in CO2 will be required by mid-century to meet climate change mitigation targets. This is true regardless of the time horizon used to compare long- and short-lived emissions. The short-lived emission intensities of some low-CO2 technologies are higher than others, and thus their suitability for meeting climate targets depends sensitively on the evaluation time horizon. Other technologies offer low intensities of both short-lived emissions and CO2.