Investigating Particulate and Nitrogen Oxides Emissions of a Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle for a Real-World Driving Scenario

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) show a high pollutant emission variability that strongly depends on the operating conditions of the internal combustion engine. Additionally, studies indicate that driving situations outside of the real driving emissions boundary conditions can lead to substantial pollutant emission increases. The objective of this study is to measure and analyze the particulate number (PN) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions of a Euro 6 PHEV for a selected real-world driving test route in the Stuttgart metropolitan area. For this purpose, the vehicle is set out with multiple measurement devices to monitor vehicle internal and external parameters. Particle distribution results show an overall uniform pattern, which allows a comparative analysis of the different test scenarios on the basis of the PN concentration. While the trip-average PN emissions are in good agreement, transient effects during highway driving can substantially increase emissions, whereas the fuel consumption does not necessarily increase in such situations. PN measurements including ultrafine particles (UFP) show a significant increase in urban emissions due to higher cold start emission peaks. Additionally, low ambient temperatures raise the uncertainty of NOx and PN cold start emissions. With regard to future emission regulations, which claim that vehicles need to be as clean as possible in all driving situations, PHEV emission investigations for further situations outside of the current legislations are required

Potentials of Light Electric Vehicles for Climate Protection by Substituting Passenger Car Trips

For the transformation of the mobility sector, small and light electric vehicles (LEV) show great promise, owing to their efficiency and low vehicle weight resulting in low energy consumption and lower greenhouse gas emissions per driven kilometer. The presented study focuses on the theoretical potential of substitutability of passenger car trips in Germany by varied LEVs based on the “Mobilität in Deutschland 2017” (“Mobility in Germany 2017”) dataset, for the year 2030. A detailed approach for identifying substitutable car trips was developed, reflecting age, trip purpose, number of passengers, and other decision criteria. By conducting a life cycle assessment of the considered LEVs and passenger cars, potential emission savings were analyzed. In the considered baseline scenario, it is found that emissions could be reduced by 44 % with 50% of passenger car mileage being substitute by LEVs. This study, thereby, gives way to further research on LEVs, and would urge both policy makers and general users to steer towards comprehensive measures that encourage a switch from cars to LEVs

A new approach for the bottom-up calculation of global road transport emissions

Road transport is responsible for two-thirds of transport related greenhouse emissions. To assess the impact of road transport on climate change, different model approaches have been applied. For global emissions, integrated assessment models (IAMs) have been established to asses the impact of different sectors on climate change. IAMs are capable of linking technical and socioeconomic development as well as policy decisions to emission scenarios. However, they offer limited differentiation in analyzing specific subsectors, transport modes, countries, or vehicle technologies. To address this gap, our aim is to calculate emissions from different road transport modes bottom-up for various world regions for the reference year 2019. The established models for determining transport activities and emissions consider different transport modes like passenger car, various truck classes, and two- and three-wheelers. Drivetrain and country specific emission factors are derived and subsequently aggregated according to the stock fleet in 2019. Different approaches and data sources are considered for estimating the drivetrain specific emission factors of each country analyzed. For giving a comprehensive overview of emissions, twenty species have been calculated, including CO2, CH4, CO, N2O, NMVOC, NO2, PM10, PM2.5, SO2 etc. Additionally, non-exhaust emissions have been analyzed. In this paper, we present the methodology and results of the emission calculations for the reference year 2019. Regarding the passenger car transport activity, the data for 2019 is determined based on historical motorization rates for representative countries. Gompertz functions are estimated that represent the relationship between economic development and car ownership. The result is motorization rates in number of cars per 1000 inhabitants for each country. Together with population data, average annual mileages per vehicle and occupancy rates, the annual car traffic demand is calculated. The transport performance of the 2- and 3-wheeler, rail and bus modes is calculated in relation to car transport performance on the basis of modal split assumptions. For the commercial vehicles, less statistical data is available. Therefore, for non-OECD countries where the transport activity in ton-km is not available, a similarity analysis has been performed to derive an approximate behavior. The 2019 commercial transport activity was mapped using fixedeffects models. Data up to 2013 was used as training data for the regression. In order to obtain modeled results, economic and population data from 2019 was used in the model. For the spatial distribution of emissions, a new approach based on traffic data counts is presented. This enables a more precise allocation of emissions, which is important for certain pollutants. With this approach, we achieve a spatial resolution of 0.1°. The resulting emission inventory for road transport provides additional information of uncertainty factors along the entire modelling chain and allows a detailed evaluation of the results for climate modelers and practitioners. Moreover, the models developed in with this approach allow the creation of scenarios for the future trend for road traffic emissions. These scenarios can take into account specific technological developments and measures for individual modes of transport and countries

The Potential of Light Electric Vehicles for Climate Protection through Substitution for Passenger Car Trips - Germany as a Case Study

This presentation summarizes the results of the LEV4Climate Study. Light electric vehicles can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by replacing large and heavy vehicles. Emissions decrease for replacement of passenger cars with any type of propulsion, albeit to different extents. In order to quantify the theoretical potential of emission reduction, this study models a scenario in 2030, in which a major modal shift away from trips with full-sized passenger cars to LEVs has taken place. This analysis assumes today’s patterns of mobility are maintained, but using full sized cars only for those few trips which are very long or include many occupants. The work employs Germany as a case study for potential savings, given the national importance of cars as both a means of mobility and an economic sector. Statistical data from a representative national survey serves as the basis for analysing which car trips can be substituted with LEVs. We use the characteristics of vehicles (e.g. speed, range, number of seats) and trips (e.g. distance) to determine which trips may be conducted in LEVs, and thus derive a total for substitutable car kilometers. Together with an assessment of greenhouse gas emissions per vehicle kilometer for both LEVs and the replaced vehicles (considering production via life cycle analyses and energy for vehicle use), a theoretical, calculative potential of greenhouse gas emissions savings is derived for Germany. The analysis shows that up to 50 % of car mileage could be replaced with LEVs which corresponds to up to 44 % savings of greenhouse gas emissions

D-Light on promoters : a client-server system for the analysis and visualization of cis-regulatory elements

Background: The binding of transcription factors to DNA plays an essential role in the regulation of gene expression. Numerous experiments elucidated binding sequences which subsequently have been used to derive statistical models for predicting potential transcription factor binding sites (TFBS). The rapidly increasing number of genome sequence data requires sophisticated computational approaches to manage and query experimental and predicted TFBS data in the context of other epigenetic factors and across different organisms. Results: We have developed D-Light, a novel client-server software package to store and query large amounts of TFBS data for any number of genomes. Users can add small-scale data to the server database and query them in a large scale, genome-wide promoter context. The client is implemented in Java and provides simple graphical user interfaces and data visualization. Here we also performed a statistical analysis showing what a user can expect for certain parameter settings and we illustrate the usage of D-Light with the help of a microarray data set. Conclusions: D-Light is an easy to use software tool to integrate, store and query annotation data for promoters. A public D-Light server, the client and server software for local installation and the source code under GNU GPL license are available at http://biwww.che.sbg.ac.at/dlight.Josef Laimer, Clemens J Zuzan, Tobias Ehrenberger, Monika Freudenberger, Simone Gschwandtner, Carina Lebherz and Peter Lackne

User-oriented development of global emission inventories: Bottom-up modeling of emissions from land transport, aviation and shipping in the DLR project ELK

The transport sector accounts for about one quarter of worldwide anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Since a robust growth in transport activity is expected over the coming decades, reducing associated emissions to mitigate human-caused climate change is a particular challenge. In order to achieve high-quality comparative monitoring, to develop scenarios for future emissions, and to enable a robust assessment of climate protection measures, the allocation of emissions to the subsector level is a necessary prerequisite. The DLR project ELK - EmissionsLandKarte (en.: emission map) contributes here in several respects: (1) requirements are specified in an application-based manner, i.e. compatibility with existing inventories, such as the ones generated for IPCC, is ensured and insufficiencies in spatial resolution and methodological detail are addressed, (2) an input database congruent with both statistical data and SSP scenarios is provided, and (3) bottom-up calculations are performed that allow attribution of climate impacts to specific transport services, as well as prospective analyses where, for example, activity levels change or alternative fuels affect regional emission factors. The resulting prototype global gas and particle emission inventories for land transport, aviation and shipping reflect the status quo as of 2019. For land transport, fine-grained activity and vehicle fleet data as well as technology-specific emission factors are applied. This allows emissions from passenger and freight transport to be disaggregated by mode and vehicle type. New approaches for spatial disaggregation of emissions will increase transparency of the methodology. For aviation, calculations are based on fleet composition and transport performance for both passenger and cargo traffic at the airport pair level, while real flight tracks serve as the foundation for spatial allocation. For both transport sectors, complementary analyses are performed to characterize particulate emissions in order to fill gaps in data availability. For shipping, transport performance on inland waterways and maritime routes are considered, including technical data describing propulsion and bunkering. Finally, all mode-specific results are subjected to an innovative uncertainty assessment aligned with the needs of other emission inventory creators through a detailed evaluation per uncertainty factor, as well as aggregated values for climate modelers and practitioners. The consistent assessment of uncertainty factors along the entire calculation chain, such as activity levels, emission factors, and proxy data used for spatial or temporal disaggregation, promotes comparability across all transport sectors. In this paper, we outline the new methodological approaches for mapping transport emissions and present first results

Wasserstoff als ein Fundament der Energiewende Teil 2: Sektorenkopplung und Wasserstoff: Zwei Seiten der gleichen Medaille

Der vorliegende zweite Teil - Sektorenkopplung und Wasserstoff: Zwei Seiten der gleichen Medaille knüpft an diesem Punkt an. Er befasst sich detailliert mit möglichen Nutzungspfaden von Wasserstoff in den Sektoren Verkehr, Industrie und Wärme sowie mit dem systemisch wichtigen Aspekt der Rückverstromung. Am Beispiel aktueller Forschungsarbeiten im DLR wird dargestellt, welche Potenziale sich durch die Kopplung der verschiedenen Energieverbrauchssektoren bei der Erzeugung und Nutzung von Wasserstoff ergeben. Diese Synergien ebnen den Weg zu einer effizienteren und flexibleren Nutzung von erneuerbarer Energie. Neben den technologischen Einsatzmöglichkeiten spielen darüber hinaus die Infrastruktur sowie dazugehörige Sicherheitsaspekte bei der Nutzung von Wasserstoff eine gewichtige Rolle. Weiterhin wird im DLR auf dem Gebiet der Energiesystemanalyse an der Einschätzung der Auswirkungen großskaliger Wasserstoffinfrastrukturen auf das bestehende und zukünftige Energiesystem geforscht. Dies beinhaltet auch die Fragestellungen, ob ein klimaneutrales Energiesystem aus heutiger Sicht überhaupt ohne Wasserstoff denkbar ist, bzw. wie groß der Wasserstoffbedarf und das -angebot in solchen Zielszenarien ausfällt. Zudem werden Umwelteinwirkungen untersucht und Lebenszyklusanalysen erstellt