Decarbonising the Road Transport Sector-Policy Options in the Medium- and Long-Run

The paper applies two well-known and widely tested models from the US Department of Energy: the Greenhouse gases Regulated Emissions and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET model) and the VISION model to quantitatively evaluate and compare the various impacts of four promising vehicle/fuel technologies: biomass-based fuels for internal combustion engine vehicles and renewable energy to produce hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles and/or electricity for plug-in hybrids and pure battery electric vehicles. For each of the four vehicle/fuel technologies consumption of total energy, emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and emissions of six pollutants are estimated for the USA for the year 2020 (as a representative of medium-term) and for the year 2050 (as a representative of long-term). The six pollutants are volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxide (NOx), particulate matter with a size smaller than 10 microns (PM10), particulate matter with a size smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5), and sulfur oxides (SOx). Although the estimates rest on a number of assumptions for the parameters entered in the model they give an idea of the possible impacts of the adoption of these technologies. A sensitivity analysis is also conducted to establish the robustness of the results.