Impact analysis of climate change on rail systems for adaptation planning: A UK case

Climate change poses critical challenges for rail infrastructure and operations. However, the systematic analysis of climate risks and the associated costs of tackling them, particularly from a quantitative perspective, is still at an embryonic phase due to the kaleidoscopic nature of climate change impacts and lack of precise climatic data. To cope with such challenges, an advanced Fuzzy Bayesian Reasoning (FBR) model is applied in this paper to understand climate threats of the railway system. This model ranks climate risks under high uncertainty in data and comprehensively evaluates these risks by taking account of infrastructure resilience and specific aspects of severity of consequence. Through conducting a nationwide survey on the British railway system, it dissects the status quo of primary climate risks. The survey implies that the top potential climate threats are heavy precipitation and floods. The primary risks caused by the climate threats are bridges collapsing and bridge foundation damage due to flooding and landslips. The findings can aid transport planners to prioritise climate risks and develop rational adaptation measures and strategies.     

Personal tradable carbon permits for road transport: Why, why not and who wins?

Personal road transport sector poses a significant challenge in reducing carbon emissions. This paper evaluates a policy approach known as personal tradable carbon permits to reduce carbon emissions from personal vehicles. The policy is a downstream tradable permit where individuals are allocated carbon emission caps. The policy is qualitatively evaluated in the context of carbon taxes and some upstream tradable permit options. The biggest disadvantage of such a policy is the initial set up costs. Personal tradable permits, however, are more effective than carbon taxes and are also capable of stabilizing the gasoline prices faced by the consumers when the underlying oil prices fluctuate. Since equity effects are often a concern to policy makers, the effect of such personal carbon permits on the distribution of burden is quantified in a partial equilibrium framework for the US population. Different permit allocation strategies are investigated in this regard. Using US consumer expenditure survey data, and incorporating a differentiated price response for different households, we find that all three allocation strategies considered are progressive: a per adult based allocation is the most progressive, a per vehicle allocation nearer to proportional, and a per capita allocation in between the two. Personal tradable permits therefore take care of equity concerns directly through the design of the policy.     

Road transport and climate change: Stepping off the greenhouse gas

Transport is Australia’s third largest and second fastest growing source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The road transport sector makes up 88% of total transport emissions and the projected emissions increase from 1990 to 2020 is 64%. Achieving prospective emission reduction targets will pose major challenges for the road transport sector. This paper investigates two targets for reducing Australian road transport greenhouse gas emissions, and what they might mean for the sector: emissions in 2020 being 20% below 2000 levels; and emissions in 2050 being 80% below 2000 levels. Six ways in which emissions might be reduced to achieve these targets are considered. The analysis suggests that major behavioural and technological changes will be required to deliver significant emission reductions, with very substantial reductions in vehicle emission intensity being absolutely vital to making major inroads in road transport GHG emissions.     

新七道梁公路隧道运营通风效果测试及分析

文章通过对新七道梁公路隧道内外气温、风速等气象条件的现场测试,研究了在隧道区域范围内风速和气温等因素影响下,隧道内风速及洞内气温变化规律,可为新七道梁公路隧道营运过程中的通风控制,以及西北中高海拔地区公路隧道通风、消防、救援研究提供依据。     

The role of charging and refuelling infrastructure in supporting zero-emission vehicle sales

Widespread uptake of battery electric, plug-in hybrid, and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (collectively zero-emissions vehicles or ZEVs) could help many regions achieve deep greenhouse gas mitigation goals. Using the case of Canada, this study investigates the extent to which increasing ZEV charging and refuelling availability may boost ZEV sales relative to other ZEV-supportive policies. We adapt a version of the Respondent-based Preferences and Constraints (REPAC) model using 2017 survey data from 1884 Canadian new vehicle-buyers to simulate the sales impacts of increasing electric vehicle charging access at home, work, public destinations, and on highways, as well as increasing hydrogen refuelling station access. REPAC is built from a stated preference choice model and represents constraints in supply and consumer awareness, as well as dynamics in ZEV policy out to 2030. Results suggest that new ZEV market share from 2020 to 2030 does not substantially benefit from increased infrastructure. Even when electric charging and hydrogen refuelling access are simulated to reach “universally” available levels by 2030, ZEV sales do not rise by more than 1.5 percentage points above the baseline trajectory. On the other hand, REPAC simulates ZEV market share rising as high as 30% by 2030 with strong ZEV-supportive policies, even without the addition of charging or refuelling infrastructure. These findings stem from low consumer valuation of infrastructure found in the stated preference model. Results suggest that achieving ambitious ZEV sale targets requires a comprehensive suite of policies beyond a focus on charging and refueling infrastructure.     

Detailed assessment of global transport-energy models’ structures and projections

This paper focuses on comparing the frameworks and projections from four global transportation models with considerable technology details. We analyze and compare the modeling frameworks, underlying data, assumptions, intermediate parameters, and projections to identify the sources of divergence or consistency, as well as key knowledge gaps. We find that there are significant differences in the base-year data and key parameters for future projections, especially for developing countries. These include passenger and freight activity, mode shares, vehicle ownership rates, and energy consumption by mode, particularly for shipping, aviation and trucking. This may be due in part to a lack of previous efforts to do such consistency-checking and “bench-marking.” We find that the four models differ in terms of the relative roles of various mitigation strategies to achieve a 2 °C/450 ppm target: the economics-based integrated assessment models favor the use of low carbon fuels as the primary mitigation option followed by efficiency improvements, whereas transport-only and expert-based models favor efficiency improvements of vehicles followed by mode shifts. We offer recommendations for future modeling improvements focusing on (1) reducing data gaps; (2) translating the findings from this study into relevant policy implications such as gaps of current policy goals, additional policy targets needed, regional vs. global reductions; (3) modeling strata of demographic groups to improve understanding of vehicle ownership levels, travel behavior, and urban vs. rural considerations; and (4) conducting coordinated efforts in aligning historical data, and comparing input assumptions and results of policy analysis and modeling insights.     

Pathways for GHG emission reduction in Norwegian road transport sector: Perspective on consumption of passenger car transport and electricity mix

Electrification of the transport sector is considered as a solution to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions and achieve sustainable mobility. Specifically in the case of electrification of passenger vehicles, various industrial and policy initiatives have been introduced. In this article, we present and assess three approaches – pro-technology, pro-simplicity and mix (of the aforementioned approaches) – to achieve target emission reductions in the Norwegian road transport sector. We also assess the influence of including ‘Guarantee of Origin’ certification for the electricity production in accounting for typical consumption electricity mix in Norway.Results show that for the same reductions in tail-pipe GHG emissions, pro-technology, pro-simplicity, and the mix scenario offer 22%, 29% and 28% reduction in the life cycle GHG emissions respectively, compared to the reference scenario in year 2020. However, the pro-simplicity scenario requires 25% reduction in vehicle-km driven compared to the pro-technology scenario, which provides the same passenger car mobility as in the reference case. When the GHG intensity of the electricity mix used to power EVs is corrected to account for actual consumption mix in Norway, a 13% reduction in the net GHG benefit of pro-technology scenario is observed.     

Impacts of an emission based private car taxation policy - First year ex-post analysis

This paper assesses the impacts of a targeted policy designed to influence car purchasing trends towards lower CO₂ emitting vehicles. Vehicle registration tax and annual motor tax rates in Ireland changed in July 2008 from being based on engine size to emissions performance of cars. This paper provides a one year ex-post analysis of the first year of the tax change, tracking the change in purchasing trends arising from the measure related to specific CO₂ emissions, engine size and fuel, and the implications for car prices, CO₂ emissions abatement, and revenue gathered. While engine efficiency improvements had been offset by purchasing trends towards larger and generally less efficient cars in the past, with the average MJ/km remaining constant from 2000 to 2007, this analysis shows that in the first year of the new taxation system the average specific emissions of new cars fell by 13% to 145 g/km. This was brought about, not by a reduction in engine size, but rather through a significant shift to diesel cars. Despite an unexpected reduction in car sales due to a recession in 2008, the policy measure has had a larger than anticipated impact on CO₂ emissions, calculated to be 5.9 ktCO₂ in the first year of the measure. The strong price signal did however result in a 33% reduction in tax revenue from VRT, in financial terms amounting to a drop of €166 million compared to a baseline situation.     

Empirical distributions of vehicle use and fuel efficiency across space: Implications of asymmetry for measuring policy incidence

Concerns about local air pollution and climate change have prompted all levels of government to consider a variety of policies to reduce vehicle dependence and fuel consumption, as the transportation sector is one of the largest sources of local and global emissions. Because many of the policy options under consideration are market-based (e.g., gasoline tax, carbon tax), it is important to consider how the impacts would vary across space and affect different subpopulations. Evaluating incidence is relevant for both the expected costs and benefits of a particular policy, however detailed data on vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) and fuel consumption allowing for the distributions of these variables to be estimated at a fine geographic scale is rarely available. This paper uses a unique dataset with more than 20 million vehicles in California to derive estimates of VMT and fuel consumption in order to examine the spatial distribution of impacts for an increase in the price of gasoline as well as the consequences of using different statistics for policy evaluation. Results show that VMT and fuel consumption distributions are not symmetrically distributed and vary significantly within transportation planning regions. To understand the potential implications of this asymmetry, we do a back of the envelope comparison using the mean and mode of the VMT or fuel consumption distribution for policy analysis. We find that assuming a symmetric distribution can lead to a divergence of 20–40% from the estimates based on the empirical distribution. Our results, therefore, introduce caution in interpreting the incidence of policies targeting the transportation sector based on averages.     

GHG emissions in daily travel and long-distance travel in Germany – Social and spatial correlates

There is considerable research on the climate effects of daily travel, including research on the spatio-temporal and socioeconomic impact factors of daily travel and associated climate change effects. However, this is less true with respect to long-distance trips. This paper uses national transport survey data from Germany to point out differences in GHG emissions related to demographic, socioeconomic and spatial characteristics for daily and long-distance travel. Daily travel and long-distance travel are investigated simultaneously and separately using Logit and OLS regressions. The results show that transport-related GHG emissions from long-distance trips and daily trips are affected by sociodemographics in largely the same direction. In contrast, spatial attributes, like municipality size or density grade of the region, show a different picture. Per capita emissions in rural and suburban areas are higher for daily trips, but lower for long-distance trips than emissions caused by urban residents. While we cannot rule out the possibility of residential self-selection, our findings challenge the idea that compact urban development may help reduce CO₂ emissions once long-distance trips are taken into account.