Assessment of Policy Alternatives for Mitigation of Barriers to EV Adoption

Electric Vehicle (EV) has become an increasingly important topic in recent years due to energy and environmental concerns. Governments started to focus on remedies to the upcoming climate change threat and seek solutions through policies and regulations. The negative impact of carbon emissions along with pressure from governmental and social organizations force automotive manufacturers to shift to alternative energy sources. However, EV transition is a complex problem because its stakeholders are very diverse including governments, policy makers, EV manufacturers, and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). Consequently, the barriers to EV adoption are not only consumer oriented, rather exist under many categories. The literature has yet to offer a comprehensive, quantified list of barriers to EV adoption. Although the enacted policies are known, the effectiveness of these policies in mitigating EV adoption is not known. The objective of this research is to assess policy alternatives for mitigation of EV adoption barriers by developing a comprehensive evaluation model. Barriers are grouped under Social, Technical, Environmental, Economic and Political (STEEP) perspectives that are perceived by decision makers as important for adoption process. The decision model of research links the perspectives to barriers, and policy alternatives. The research implements the hierarchical decision model (HDM) to construct a generalized policy assessment framework. Data for EV adoption barriers were collected from the abovementioned stakeholders. Experts\u27 qualitative judgments were collected and quantified using the pair-wise comparison method. The final rankings and effectiveness of policy alternatives were calculated. This research\u27s results showed that the most important perspective is Economic. The top three most important barriers to EV adoption were identified as Initial Cost, Battery Cost, and Entrenched Technology Resistance, respectively. The most effective policy in mitigating EV adoption barriers is R&D Incentives. The research also extended the policy effectiveness research with Policy Effectiveness Curves by reaching out to additional experts. These curves helped determine the effectiveness of each of the 6 policies at different implementation levels. Based on these results, 25 scenarios were applied by combinations of policies at different implementation levels to investigate how the effectiveness of policies can change compared to today\u27s conditions

Spatially explicit techno-economic optimisation modelling of UK heating futures

This thesis describes the use of a spatially explicit model to investigate the economies of scale associated with district heating technologies and consequently, their future technical potential when compared against individual building heating. Existing energy system models used for informing UK technology policy do not employ high enough spatial resolutions to map district heating potential at the individual settlement level. At the same time, the major precedent studies on UK district heating potential have not explored future scenarios out to 2050 and have a number of relevant low-carbon heat supply technologies absent from their analyses. This has resulted in cognitive dissonance in UK energy policy whereby district heating is often simultaneously acknowledged as both highly desirable in the near term but ultimately lacking any long term future. The Settlement Energy Demand System Optimiser (SEDSO) builds on key techno-economic studies from the last decade to further investigate this policy challenge. SEDSO can be distinguished from other models used for investigating UK heat decarbonisation by employing a unique combination of extensive spatial detail, technical modelling which captures key cost-related nonlinearities, and a least-cost constrained optimisation approach to technology selection. The study yields a number of original contributions to knowledge that are relevant for policymakers. Results described in the thesis suggest that the marginal economics of UK district heating schemes are significantly improved when compared against individual heat pumps rather than gas boilers. This is relevant because under current policy direction individual heat pumps are likely to be the major counterfactual option to district heating post-2030. Results also illustrate how assumptions about technology availability can drive large shifts in optima, and that utility-scale electric heat pumps could be a key enabling technology for district heating to supply a large fraction of UK heat demand in a post-gas heating future