Paving the way to electrified road transport - Publicly funded research, development and demonstration projects on electric and plug-in vehicles in Europe

The electrification of road transport or electro-mobility is seen by many as a potential game-changing technology that could have a significant influence on the future cost and environmental performance of personal individual mobility as well as short distance goods transport. While there is currently a great momentum vis-à-vis electro-mobility, it is yet unclear, if its deployment is economically viable in the medium to long term. Electromobility, in its early phase of deployment, still faces significant hurdles that need to be overcome in order to reach a greater market presence. Further progress is needed to overcome some of these hurdles. The importance of regulatory and financial support to emerging environmentally friendly transport technologies has been stressed in multiple occasions. The aim of our study was to collect the information on all on-going or recently concluded research, development and demonstration projects on electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, which received EU or national public funding with a budget >1mln Euro, in order to assess which of the electric drive vehicles (EDV) challenges are addressed by these projects and to identify potential gaps in the research, development, and demonstration (R, D & D) landscape in Europe. The data on R, D & D projects on electric and plug-in vehicles, which receive public funding, has been collected by means of (i) on-line research, (ii) validation of an inventory of projects at member state level through national contacts and (iii) validation of specific project information through distribution of project information templates among project coordinators. The type of information which was gathered for the database included: EDV component(s) targeted for R&D, location and scope of demo projects, short project descriptions, project budget and amount of public co-funding received, funding organisation, project coordinator,number and type of partners (i.e. utilities, OEMs, services, research institutions, local authorities), start and duration of the project. The validation process permitted the identification of additional projects which were not accounted for in the original online search. Statistical elaboration of the collected data was conducted. More than 320 R, D & D projects funded by the EU and Member states are listed and analyzed. Their total budgets add up to approximately 1.9 billion Euros. Collected data allowed also the development of an interactive emobility visualization tool, called EV-Radar, which portrays in an interactive way R&D and demonstration efforts for EDVs in Europe. It can be accessed under http://iet.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ev-radar.JRC.F.6-Energy systems evaluatio

Publicly funded research, development and demonstration projects on electric and plug-in vehicles in Europe - update

The previous report on the publicly funded research and development and demonstration projects included ongoing and recently concluded projects with the information available in 2011-2012. The aim of the current work was to update the collection of the on-going or recently concluded research, development and demonstration projects on electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, which received EU and national public funding with the total budget of more than 500000 Euro, in order to update the EV-Radar tool with new projects. Altogether 158 R&D and demonstration projects have been found and analysed in this report from EU member states and EFTA countries.JRC.F.6-Energy Technology Policy Outloo

SETIS expert workshop on the assessment of the potential of pumped hydropower storage

Energy storage is an important option to enable a higher share of variable renewable electricity such as wind and solar, in the energy system. Pumped hydropower storage (PHS) is currently the only storage technology able to provide the large storage needed for accommodating renewable electricity under the 2020 EU energy targets. Moreover, the transformation of an existing water reservoir into a PHS facility has a much smaller environmental and social impact compared with most new hydropower plant in Europe. The JRC collaborated with University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland to develop a GIS-based methodology and model to assess the potential for transforming single reservoirs into PHS systems. Then the JRC organised a multi-disciplinary expert workshop to validate the methodology and model, provide a set of recommendations for the improvement of the effectiveness and efficiency of the methodology, address the issue of data availability in the Member States, and share and disseminate the methodology among relevant stakeholders, such as policy makers, industry, research, etc. This report presents the results of the workshop which concluded that the assessment of the potential for PHS is different when its purpose is site assessment or policy planning and decision-making; and that the use of geographical information systems models is effective, efficient and convenient for both purposes whereas what differs is the intensity of the use of the tools, the detail of the data needed and the assumptions behind the model and methodology. The restriction to PHS development imposed by the different types of nature protection areas (NPA) is different in different countries. Also, laws and perceptions change with time and as PHS projects take a long time to realise the scientific assessment of European or national potential cannot take current NPAs and laws into account with the same weight as the site assessment for a proposed PHS project. Country and European assessment is heavily dependent on the assumptions taken. For example, sensibility analysis showed that enlarging the maximum distance between two reservoirs from 5 to 20 km increased the theoretical potential for Croatia from 60 GWh to nearly 600 GWh.JRC.F.6-Energy systems evaluatio

Attitude of European car drivers towards electric vehicles: a survey

CO2 emissions from road transport have risen significantly in the past and projections show that they will continue to rise in the future if no adequate policy measures are implemented. Several European initiatives aim at reducing CO2 emissions from passenger vehicles. A potential option to reduce passenger vehicle CO2 emissions is the deployment of electric vehicles (EV). Consumer perception and willingness to purchase these new vehicle technologies lies at the heart of its successful large scale diffusion. This report aims at describing and analyzing how car drivers in the six countries France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and United Kingdom consider electric cars, how familiar they are with the electric car concept and its main features. It investigates, which features of EVs people consider essential in terms of propensity to consider electric cars a realistic alternative in case they wanted to purchase a new car. 600 drivers on average per each of the six Member States responded to the questionnaire. As a result we derive an “ideal” composition of an electric car in terms of car purchase price, range, re-charge time and maximum speed. The perspective of the European car drivers, as derived from this study, highlights the importance of further R&D investments to improve some of the performance characteristics of electric vehicles. It provides some guidance which performance aspects matter most for car drivers, notably costs and range. The study finds that the familiarity of car drivers with the electric vehicle aspects is lower when direct exposure or driving experience would be needed to properly assess these aspects. This stresses the need of demonstration activities in order to increase public awareness of electro-mobility and also to receive first hand feedback from car drivers on their experience operating an electric vehicle. A majority of the respondents considers that public incentives are needed to foster a wider market deployment of electric vehicles. Furthermore the study shows that an adequate re-charge network is perceived as crucial by car drivers. It can be concluded that European car drivers see the opportunities that electric vehicles could offer but that a number of pre-requisites need to be fulfilled in order to ensure that the car drivers can consider electric vehicles as a credible vehicle choice.JRC.F.6-Energy systems evaluatio

Driving and parking patterns of European car drivers – a mobility survey

The development of innovative vehicles such as electric driven cars is an important potential option for improving the sustainability of the transport sector. A significant penetration of electric vehicles in the market is possible only if their use is compatible with mobility patterns of individuals. For instance, the driven distance should be compatible with the batteries range or parking patterns should enable re-charging. The JRC-IET together with TRT and IPSOS analyzed car mobility patterns derived from direct surveys in six European Union Member States (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and United Kingdom). The report aims at providing some insights on how electric vehicles could fit mobility habits of European car drivers. The analysis is based on the data collected within six European countries by means of a sample survey. A web-based car trips diary was filled in by on average 600 individuals in each country. The individuals logged for 7 consecutive days their driving and parking patterns in 5 minute intervals. For each trip several details such as departure and arrival time, distance and parking place were registered. Socioeconomic characteristics of individuals were also collected. The same questionnaire format was used in all countries allowing for comparability of responses. Representativeness of the derived data was ensured by weighting and aligning the received sample to the socio-demographic reference universe of each member state. Survey results are statistically analyzed to describe mobility patterns. In particular, the information on average number of car trips per day, daily travel distance, daily travel time, trip distance, distribution of parking and driving, distribution of parking places, trip purposes, duration of parking and many other parameters per Member State are analyzed and presented in the report. Moreover, the analysis of the survey data shows which share of driving patterns are compatible with the use of electric cars with their current technical features (batteries range, re-charge time) under alternative assumptions about the availability of re-charge facilities. Also differences and similarities between countries and user groups are discussed. Overall, the results of the survey provide representative driving profiles for estimating the charging profiles of electric vehicles and many other indications on how people use their car. The outcomes of the survey provide relevant methodological hints to develop similar surveys in other contexts or to repeat the survey in other countries.JRC.F.6-Energy systems evaluatio

Multi-Scale GIS-Based Multi-Criteria Analysis in Support to Decision-Making in Renewable Energy and Automotive Road Transport Sectors

The challenges posed by global change and, in particular, by one of its megatrends - climate change- imply the growing impact on the social-ecological systems. This in turn induces the search for new innovative technologies for mitigation of climate change impacts through GHG emissions reduction. One of the most promising in achieving large GHG emissions reductions from the most emitting sectors (power generation and road transportation) in the short- medium- and long-term are renewable energy generation and electrified vehicles technologies. Given the diversity of factors and associated uncertainty which influence the territorial introduction of aforementioned technologies, it is of interest to gain understanding on the potential dynamics of their penetration. Considering that an energy-related challenges require a comprehensive approach vis-à-vis the multi-criteria issues which are essentially linked among others large scale introduction of renewable energy sources (RES) for electric energy production, environmental impact and economic impact. In this thesis the following technologies and associated issues were analyzed: wind power, feedstock for biogas production and electrified vehicles as promising and feasible options for short to medium term decline in GHG emissions. In this thesis the multi-criteria-geographic information system (MCA-GIS) based approach was chosen to be developed for the evaluation of the potential of aforementioned technologies at a given scale of assessment with subsequent scenario production. As a results the multiple scientific products were obtained all aiming at supporting the decision-makers in their choices of the appropriate measures to be implemented. In case of wind energy the focus was on the identification of the necessary options that manage the variability of wind turbine output and enable the large scale integration of wind power with the current electricity system, such as additional power reserves, distributed storage technologies, in particular electric vehicles, and cross-border power transmission. The influence of geographical location of wind turbines on the produced power variability was addressed as well. It was highlighted that even though the state-of-art technologies for the higher wind integration are present, there is a necessity for the proper management and integration of mentioned options. The approach developed during the assessment of the feedstock for biogas production via anaerobic co-digestion exploited the spatial relations among territorial units (i.e., a contiguity analysis), and integrates time series of continuous and discrete data and permitted to develop a territorial information system in support for biogas planning, perform analysis of feedstock for biogas from different sources potential and produce plausible scenarios for identification of biogas suitable territorial clusters. While analysis of market potential for electrified vehicles (EDVs) allowed to produce first the factor set that allows the identification of possible lead markets for EDVs in Europe and to investigate how these regions will be changing in time between first early-adopter areas towards other long-term potential lead regions, depending on the evolution of the market drivers and assist in the informed political decisions as to at which scale and area a policy intervention might be appropriate in order to support lead markets for EDVs. Secondly a fully functional GIS-based multi-criteria decision support process with fuzzy measures was developed and applied at NUTS2 regions and cities within EU27 member states with three scenarios. Across the scenario horizon, it was shown how lead regions for EDVs will be changing in time between first early-adopter areas towards other long-term potential lead regions, depending on the evolution of the market drivers.JRC.F.7-Energy systems evaluatio

Analyzing potential lead markets for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in Europe: Expert views and spatial perspective

The paper presents spatially explicit results for 272 countries of European Union indicating the potential lead markets for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in 2030 and 2050. The assessment combined an expert elicitation survey results and a decision-making rule applied on a regional level using region specific characteristics. It has been shown that in 2030 the EU15 countries have a higher hydrogen FCV lead market score than EU12, with the difference of the lead market potential between EU15 and EU12 reduced in 2050. The results of the study can help policy makers to identify measures that could foster the deployment of hydrogen regions in specific lead markets. This is especially crucial as a large scale deployment of hydrogen vehicles and the related infrastructure needs to develop with lead markets as nuclei for further market replication and spread.JRC.F.6-Energy systems evaluatio

Assessing factors for the identification of potential lead markets for electrified vehicles in Europe: expert opinion elicitation

This paper integrates findings from specialized literature and expert opinion evaluation to increase the understanding of present and future drivers for electric drive vehicle (EDV) market uptake on a wide spatial scale as a basis for subsequent multi-criteria evaluations applied to different market deployment scenarios. Two types of analyses were integrated to achieve the goal of the identification of drivers, which indicate the lead markets for EDV adoption. First a list of criteria and factors was developed based on a literature survey. Secondly, this factor set was then verified and assessed by a panel of experts representing key stakeholders with different scientific and technical background at the European level. The factors were broadly grouped under five different criteria: “demography”, “environment”, “economy”, “energy” and “transport”. The expert survey included a valuation of each of the factors providing quantitative, qualitative and importance weighting values for each of the factors for the years 2020 and 2030 and the validity of factors roster and the level of expert congruence. The results of the study indicate that the experts have confidence in battery electric vehicles (BEV) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) to reach a sustained market deployment by 2030 and a spatially increasing market distribution from 2020 to 2030 as revealed by the sale projections provided by them. The experts seem to consider PHEVs as more robust vis-à-vis the investigated factors than BEVs. The screened factor set includes well-to-wheel emissions, privileged access to dedicated lanes, parking and city centers, the technology learning rate and population density for both vehicle types. Fuel cost savings received congruent feedback for electric drive vehicles. The list which was derived can assist in informed political decisions as to at which scale and area a policy intervention might be appropriate in order to support lead markets for BEVs and PHEVs in Europe.JRC.F.6-Energy systems evaluatio

Analysis of European mobility surveys and their potential to support studies on the impact of electric vehicles on energy and infrastructure needs in Europe

Projections show that CO2 emissions from road transport will continue to rise in the future if adequate policy measures are not implemented. Electrically driven vehicle (EDV) deployment is one way to reduce the CO2 emissions. EDV drive and charge patterns determine the resulting electricity demand, emission reductions, future infrastructure requirements and the integration of non-dispatchable renewable electricity. In order to analyse the impact of EDVs on European energy and infrastructure needs, the driving patterns of potential EDV users should be analysed. Due to the lack of sufficient historical representative data on driving patterns with EDVs, this study analyses whether European national travel surveys (NTS) can be a potential data source to derive usage patterns for EDVs. We perform a meta-analysis of NTS from 9 European countries to assess their adequacy for analysing the impacts of EDVs on the European electricity system. Several gaps in data availability and comparability are identified. Except for the UK, European NTS are not detailed enough to assess EDV charging profiles, which is also due to the methodological differences used for NTS data collection in the various countries. We conclude that a dedicated survey needs to be developed to reliably estimate EDV charging profiles.JRC.F.6-Energy Technology Policy Outloo

Spatially Explicit Assessment of Local Biomass Availability for Distributed Biogas Production via Anaerobic Co-digestion – Mediterranean Case Study

Renewable energies, especially energy from biomass, contribute to the sustainable development of the territory. Simultaneously, by using biomass to produce bioenergy, bioreproductive land is devoted to supply energy. As the bioreproductive land area on the European level is decreasing, bioenergy competes against other demands like the production of food, industrial resources or cultural goods and services, among others, thus the correct assessment of the available local potential is important for local and regional planning. Moreover, bioenergy system being a socio-ecological system requires integrated approaches for the evaluation of the factors, components and interactions of such a system, considering that agriculture presents one of the major drivers of the land use change and biodiversity loss. Therefore, this work was focused on the development of the approach for and on the assessment of biogas potentials to provide a support for decision-makers and bioenergy industry at a local scale. The approach exploits the spatial relations among territorial units (i.e., a contiguity analysis), and integrates time series of continuous and discrete data. It is based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) combined with GIS-based analysis, and permitted to develop a territorial information system in support for biogas planning, perform analysis of feedstock for biogas from different sources potential and produce plausible scenarios for identification of biogas suitable territorial clusters; the analysis of the tradeoffs between the use of different local sources of the feedstock for biogas production are discussed as well.JRC.F.7-Energy systems evaluatio