Developing a Hydrogen Vehicle Market in California Will Require Significant Upfront Investment, but Should be Self-Sustaining Thereafter

While hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) are seen as a part of California’s efforts to decarbonize transportation, especially for the heavy-duty vehicle sector, their role remains unclear. This may change, however, with the launch of the California Alliance for Renewable Clean Energy Hydrogen Energy Systems (ARCHES) developed by the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) as a public-private partnership. The U.S. Department of Energy and ARCHES recently signed a $12.6 billion agreement to build a clean, renewable Hydrogen Hub in California, including up to$1.2 billion in federal funding. The transportation sector will play a central role in this effort, including commitments to deploy 6,000 FCEVs, mainly trucks and buses, along with 60 refueling stations and other investments

Sustainable Incentives for Accelerating the Zero Emission Vehicle Transition

Effective policy tools are urgently needed to enable the United States to keep pace with international climate goals. “Feebates”—fees applied to the purchase of vehicles with higher emissions and rebates for clean ones—have become an effective and increasingly common strategy for shaping vehicle markets in European countries. A holistic policy framework that will accelerate the transition to zero emission vehicles (ZEVs) in the US will likely include strong federal policies such as sales mandates, purchase fees for higher emission vehicles, and purchase incentives for ZEVs. Researchers from the University of California, Davis examined what makes a feebate policy work and how this strategy can be leveraged to shift US vehicle markets. The research included a review and analysis of feebate mechanisms in European countries. This policy brief summarizes research findings and provides policy implications. View the NCST Project Webpag

A Comparative Review of Hydrogen Engines and Fuel Cells for Trucks

The concept of hydrogen internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) is not new, but has gained renewed interest lately, especially for heavy-duty trucks. Different from hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), which represent a novel zero-emission technology, hydrogen engines are modified conventional engines running on hydrogen fuel instead of gasoline or diesel. This study presents a comparative review of hydrogen engines and fuel cells, based on existing reports and discussions with industry. We consider aspects such as vehicle efficiency, greenhouse gas (GHG) and criteria pollutant emissions, hydrogen fuel purity, vehicle attributes, vehicle acquisition costs, total costs of ownership, and new policies. We find that hydrogen ICEVs offer some advantages and disadvantages: advantages include lower production cost and potentially greater reliability; disadvantages include potentially overall lower efficiency (and thus higher fuel cost) and lack of zero-vehicle-emission operation. While the technologies could be complementary (e.g., hydrogen ICEVs serving as a transition technology toward FCEVs), they also may compete, with success for hydrogen ICEVs resulting in setbacks for FCEV market success

Plug-In Electric Vehicles: A Case Study of Seven Markets

At the current stage of plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) market development, sales rates vary dramatically across different countries and regions. For policy-makers and other stakeholders it is useful to understand the major social, economic, and policy drivers of vehicle adoption. This paper provides insights into the developing PEV markets in Norway, Netherlands, California, United States, France, Japan, and Germany. This is accomplished by applying a Technological Innovation System (TIS) approach that systematically identifies the role of different factors in promulgating new markets. Our comparison between markets shows that in all studied regions, sales of PEVs are supported through various types of government incentives, government resources, and other legitimation activities. However, regions with relatively strong PEV markets have a greater focus on market formation activities and relatively higher costs savings associated with operating an electric vehicle as compared to a conventional vehicle. To determine whether these factors are the primary determinants of PEV market shares, further research should be undertaken that also incorporates analysis related to the presence and government support for entrepreneurial activities related to electric vehicle innovation

Sustainable Market Incentives -- Lessons from European Feebates for a ZEV Future

Strong policies with sustainable incentives are needed to accelerate the EV transition. This paper assesses various feebate designs assessing recent policy evolution in five European countries. While there are key design elements that should be considered, there is no optimal feebate design. Different policy objectives could be served by feebates influencing its design and effectiveness. Using feebates to transition to EVs has emerged a key objective. With the financial sustainability of EV incentive programs being questioned, a self financing market mechanism could be the need of the hour solution. Irrespective of the policy goals, a feebate will impact both the supply side, i.e., the automotive industry and the consumer side. Globally, feebates can be used to effect technology leapfrogging while navigating the political economy of clean transportation policy in different country contexts. This paper highlights thirteen design elements of an effective feebate policy that can serve as a foundation for policymakers

Internal Combustion Engine Bans and Global Oil Use

Automotive transport represents one of the highest contributing sources of oil use, local air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. Several countries, notably including several European countries and China, have proposed bans on the sale of automotive internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles as a means to abate these negative effects from the sector. Some cities and regions have already instituted restrictions on ICE vehicles. Larger, national bans have been discussed as a policy to begin in 2040. We consider the literature on proposed policies to ban ICE vehicles and develop scenarios to estimate the potential impacts of these proposed bans, to contribute to a peaking in oil demand and eventual reductions in CO2 emissions. We find that national level ICE car bans in key markets such as China and Europe in 2040 could reduce oil use by five million barrels a day (b/d) by 2050, under five percent of projected global oil use. A global ban would eliminate three times that level of oil use but would likely take several decades for its full impact is realized. Our findings suggest that other supporting policies beyond the bans alone might be necessary to trigger more rapid changes in markets and purchase behavior

Technology and Fuel Transition Scenarios to Low Greenhouse Gas Futures for Cars and Trucks in California

This study examines potential changes in car and truck powertrain technology and fuel mix that could enable a transition to low carbon futures, out to 2050, in California. We consider combinations of battery-electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells, and advanced biofuels, including ethanol, diesel biofuels, and renewable natural gas, for internal combustion engines that could lead to 80% GHG reductions compared to 1990. We consider two main low-carbon scenarios—a high ZEV adoption case (ZEV) and a mixed (ZEV and Biofuel) adoption case (ZEV+B)—both relative to a business-as-usual (BAU) case. We find that achieving an 80% reduction in CO2 from cars and trucks (separately and together) appears feasible at relatively low cumulative cost, and with eventual likely net savings (as fuel savings exceed vehicle cost, mostly after 2030). However, the required rates of increase in sales of ZEV cars and trucks, and production volumes of advanced, low-carbon biofuels, will be quite challenging. Regarding ZEVs, we expect the greatest challenge to be for long-haul trucks, and we reduce the rate of sales increase for these as a result. In the ZEV scenario, all vehicle types reach 100% ZEV sales shares by 2050 (except long-haul trucks, which reach 80%). In the ZEV+B scenario, these targets are lower, but a strong ramp-up in advanced biofuel use is needed to achieve the 80% target, with commercial scale cellulosic production of ethanol and renewable diesel dominant by 2050. The net costs or savings of the scenarios are relatively low—on the order of ±$10-50 billion over the next 30 years—in relation to$4 trillion total spending in the BAU scenario. However, the additional costs of vehicle purchase run as high as $110 billion in the ZEV scenario, which will likely require substantial purchase incentives to overcome. Future research should examine how costs translate into policy needs (including generalized cost factors such as driving range) and the potential role, sourcing, and cost of advanced biofuels

Determinantal representations of hyperbolic plane curves: An elementary approach

If a real symmetric matrix of linear forms is positive definite at some point, then its determinant is a hyperbolic hypersurface. In 2007, Helton and Vinnikov proved a converse in three variables, namely that every hyperbolic plane curve has a definite real symmetric determinantal representation. The goal of this paper is to give a more concrete proof of a slightly weaker statement. Here we show that every hyperbolic plane curve has a definite determinantal representation with Hermitian matrices. We do this by relating the definiteness of a matrix to the real topology of its minors and extending a construction of Dixon from 1902. Like Helton and Vinnikov's theorem, this implies that every hyperbolic region in the plane is defined by a linear matrix inequality.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, minor revision

Constraints on the Atmospheric Circulation and Variability of the Eccentric Hot Jupiter XO-3b

We report secondary eclipse photometry of the hot Jupiter XO-3b in the 4.5~$\mu$m band taken with the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on the Spitzer Space Telescope. We measure individual eclipse depths and center of eclipse times for a total of twelve secondary eclipses. We fit these data simultaneously with two transits observed in the same band in order to obtain a global best-fit secondary eclipse depth of $0.1580\pm 0.0036\%$ and a center of eclipse phase of $0.67004\pm 0.00013$. We assess the relative magnitude of variations in the dayside brightness of the planet by measuring the size of the residuals during ingress and egress from fitting the combined eclipse light curve with a uniform disk model and place an upper limit of 0.05$\%$. The new secondary eclipse observations extend the total baseline from one and a half years to nearly three years, allowing us to place an upper limit on the periastron precession rate of $2.9\times 10^{-3}$ degrees/day the tightest constraint to date on the periastron precession rate of a hot Jupiter. We use the new transit observations to calculate improved estimates for the system properties, including an updated orbital ephemeris. We also use the large number of secondary eclipses to obtain the most stringent limits to date on the orbit-to-orbit variability of an eccentric hot Jupiter and demonstrate the consistency of multiple-epoch Spitzer observations.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, published by Ap

Toric Degenerations of Fano Threefolds Giving Weak Landau-Ginzburg Models

We show that every rank one smooth Fano threefold has a weak Landau-Ginzburg model coming from a toric degeneration. The fibers of these Landau-Ginzburg models can be compactified to K3 surfaces with Picard lattice of rank 19. We also show that any smooth Fano variety of arbitrary dimension which is a complete intersection of Cartier divisors in weighted projective space has a very weak Landau-Ginzburg model coming from a toric degeneration.Comment: v3: minor corrections for final versio