Abstract
The penetration of electric vehicles (EV) seems to be a forthcoming reality in the transport sector worldwide, involving significant increases in electricity demand. However, many countries such as Spain have not yet set binding policy targets in this regard. When compared to a business-as-usual situation, this work evaluates the life-cycle consequences of the increased electricity demand of the Spanish road transport technology mix until 2050. This is done by combining Life Cycle Assessment and Energy Systems Modelling under three alternative scenarios based on the low, medium, or high penetration rate of EV. In all cases, EV deployment is found to involve a relatively small percentage (<4%) of the final electricity demand. Wind power and waste-to-energy plants arise as the main technologies responsible for meeting the increased electricity demand associated with EV penetration. When considering a high market penetration (20 million EV by 2050), the highest annual impacts potentially caused by the additional electricity demand are 0.93 Mt CO2 eq, 0.25 kDALY, and 30.34 PJ in terms of climate change, human health, and resources, respectively. Overall, EV penetration is concluded to slightly affect the national power generation sector, whereas it could dramatically reduce the life-cycle impacts associated with conventional transport.
Highlights
Nowadays, the transport sector accounts for a quarter of the global CO2 emissions from fuel combustion
This work addresses a prospective Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study to evaluate the potential climate change (CC), human health (HH), and resources (Re) impacts of the increased electricity demand associated with electric vehicles (EV) penetration in Spain
This study is especially useful for long-term energy planning at the national level, the methodological framework and the results presented are expected to be useful for a wide range of countries and actors facing similar decisionand policy-making concerns
Summary
The transport sector accounts for a quarter of the global CO2 emissions from fuel combustion. Since the transport sector has a low share of renewable energy, considerable efforts are required for its transformation [3]. In this sense, alternative transportation fuels should be explored in order to mitigate the climate change impact linked to conventional fuels. As well as other member states of the European Union, is actively involved in the fight against climate change and contemplates EV penetration as a potential energy solution for the road transport sector, even though binding policy targets have not yet been set for Spain. There are several studies in the literature which estimate different penetration rates for EV in Spain, as summarised in Table 1 [5,6,7,8,9]
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