THE ROLE OF BATTERY ELECTRIC VEHICLES IN DEEP DECARBONIZATION

Abstract

The transportation sector is experiencing a period of unprecedented and disruptive change from the rapid improvement in the performance and cost of battery electric vehicles (BEVs). We quantify the carbon mitigation cost impact from transport electrification with BEVs under policies to limit the Earth surface temperature change to [Formula: see text]C. Our results show that the reduction in carbon mitigation costs from transport electrification is as high as 40%. While BEVs without decarbonization policies merely shift the sources of emissions, aggressive BEV adoption with policies dramatically reduces the cost of addressing climate change because power sector decarbonization costs are capped by a broad range of emission-free power technologies. The decarbonization of electricity caps road transport decarbonization costs with BEVs. Without BEVs, transportation decarbonization costs escalate as the liquid fuel costs rise sharply with carbon penalties on fossil fuels and large-scale biofuels production. Electrification of transport with BEVs transforms a “problem” sector into a major part of the climate solution.