The correlated impacts of fuel consumption improvements and vehicle electrification on vehicle greenhouse gas emissions in China

Abstract

Energy security and environmental issues have drawn great attentions to the energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the road transport sector. With economic development, travel demands and logistics demands will continue to rise in China. To solve the associated problems, policies related to electric vehicle (EV) promotion and fuel economy regulations are being adopted by the state government. Six scenarios, based on different policies, are analyzed to calculate vehicle fleet GHG emissions in this research by developing a bottom-up modeling framework from a life-cycle perspective. When only fuel economy regulations are considered, GHG emissions from the road transport sector will reach their peak in 2047. However, combined with EV deployment, the peak will arrive earlier, in 2026. In the short term, more stringent fuel economy regulations exhibit better results. Without EVs, fuel economy regulations will be tougher for corporations to meet than with the introduction of EVs. However, in the long term, with a higher proportion of EVs, GHG emissions will further decrease. In addition, the introduction of EVs will weaken the effects of fuel economy regulations, especially for passenger vehicles, due to credit policies. The lack of EVs in the commercial vehicle fleet will impart more significance to the fuel economy regulations. Commercial vehicles, particularly trucks, will account for the majority of GHG emissions by the whole vehicle fleet. In brief, the government should persistently focus on the fuel economy regulations to achieve an early and relatively low-level peak in vehicle fleet GHG emissions. Meanwhile, the promotion of EVs will have the long-term effect of de-carbonization. In addition, more effective measures should be taken to reduce the truck GHG emissions.