Impacts of Policy on Electric Vehicle Diffusion

Selection and design of appropriate government policies to support electric vehicle (EV) adoption can be aided by modelling the future impact of policy instruments relative to a given baseline estimate. This paper highlights the innovative application of a diffusion model to analyse complex impacts of EV policy instruments on future incremental EV uptake. Several versions of four key policy instruments are tested in the model: linking electric vehicle sales to Renewable Electricity Purchases (RE-EV), financial subsidies, smart charging incentives and a common cost metric to educate consumers about the lifetime costs of EVs. Market share between battery electric vehicles (BEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) were forecasted out to the year 2034 across all 1.5 million households in the state of Victoria, Australia. The RE-EV scenario had the strongest performance in terms of economic and societal indicators. Non-subsidy policy instruments can also support uptake of EVs, especially in the case of encouraging BEV adoption. We found feebate scenarios were more effective policies than rebates. Rebate and feebate scenarios applied within the 2014-2019 timeframe compared better than those with longer timeframes. Our analyses showed how combined policy scenarios not only further improved EV uptake but also allowed government to fund rebates through feebate income

Indoor environment quality and occupant productivity in the CH2 building

This paper presents a summary of the results from a post-occupancy evaluation study on indoor environment quality (lEO) and occupant health, wellbeing and productivity in the Council House 2 (CH2) building, which is owned and occupied by the City of Melbourne. This case study has highlighted that the productivity of office building occupants can potentially be enhanced through good building design, and provision of a high quality, healthy, comfortable and functional interior environment, that takes account of basic occupant needs.<br /

A second chance for old buildings

In the Netherlands, both the office market and housing market show a mismatch between supply and demand, quantitatively and qualitatively. In 2007 almost 14% of all offices are vacant, i.e. 5.9 million square meters. At the same time we see a shortage of about 1 million dwellings. A building must be able to be changed over its life cycle to adapt to the inevitable evolving needs of it’s end users. The first real challenge is how to make adaptable buildings without creating unnecessary redundancy. The second challenge is the re-use of old vacant buildings because the available area for erecting new ones is very scarce in the Netherlands. In this matter, old buildings deserve a second chance in their life cycle. We need to be able to measure the transformation potential of office buildings both at location and at building level. To this end, we have developed what we call a ‘transformation potential meter’ (Geraedts, Van der Voordt, 2003, 2004). The meter has been tested since 2004 in practice by a number of market players, and by students of architecture. This has allowed the transformation potential meter to be evaluated and refined in 2006. Two new steps - the financial feasibility scan and the risk assessment checklist – have also been added. In this paper, we describe the principle of the new transformation potential meter

Volatile organic compounds within indoor environments in Australia

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are pervasive indoor air pollutants. This paper systematically evaluates 25 years (1991–2016) of investigations of VOCs within indoor environments in Australia. Among 31 papers evaluated, the most frequently studied environment was domestic housing (61%), and the most frequently quantified compound was formaldehyde (81%). Active sampling techniques were used in 82% of studies of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX), and in 38% of studies of formaldehyde and other carbonyls. New homes had the highest VOC levels among all studies of domestic housing. For nearly all pollutants, indoor levels were several times higher than outdoor levels. Among the most prevalent compounds indoors were terpenes, such as d-limonene and a-pinene. All studies were conducted at a regional or local level, and no study reported statistically representative indoor VOC data for the Australian population. The evaluation revealed a diversity of sampling approaches and techniques, pointing to the importance of a standard approach for collecting and reporting data