What is the Role of Electric Vehicles in a Low Carbon Transport in China?

Abstract

In December 2009, China government has officially announced, for the first time, a voluntary quantitative target of controlling its carbon dioxide emissions, which is to cut the carbon dioxide intensity (kg CO2 per GDP) by 40%~45% by the year 2020 (relative to the level of 2005). Transportation is one of the major sources of carbon dioxide emissions resulting from fossil fuel utilizations all over the world. In 2008 carbon dioxide emissions caused by transportation fuel combustion accounted for about 8% of the national total in China (Yang, 2011). This percentage is far behind some advanced economies, such as 33% in United States in 2004, 26% in Europe in 2004 (Wallington, 2008), and so forth. In either developing countries or developed countries road sector is responsible for approximate 80% of total carbon dioxide emissions resulting from transportation (Yang, 2011; Wallington, 2008), which indicates that road transportation has been playing a significant role in reducing transportation carbon dioxide emissions now and in the future. Compared with 824 vehicles per 1,000 people in United States in 2008 and 608 vehicles per 1,000 people in Japan in 2009, there were only about 68 vehicles per 1,000 people in China in 2010. It is clear that China’s vehicle population will be twice as many as present level when the vehicle ownership is doubled and meanwhile the national population is sustained. As an emerging economy, this situation will probably happen in next 5~10 years. Without revolutionary change of transportation system, the consequent carbon dioxide emissions from road transportation will possibly be doubled as well. It can be predicted that transportation sector would become one of the fastest growing sources of carbon dioxide emissions in China in next several decades. Thus, a low carbon transport system is expected to be proposed soon as a potential solution to addressing the conflict between the development of transportation and economy and the mitigation of climate change. In response to concerns over establishing the low carbon transport system and meeting the increasing domestic petroleum demand, interest in developing advanced vehicle technologies and alternative vehicle fuels has risen considerably in past ten years. Many research and demonstration programs of various technologies were supported by Chinese government, including light-duty vehicles (LDVs) using methanol (M85) and ethanol (E10), buses and taxies using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), compressed natural gas (CNG), and liquefied natural gas (LNG), passenger cars and buses using dimethylether (DME), passenger cars using diesel, and so forth. Ethanol gasoline (E10) has been put into mandatory use since 2003 in five Chinese provinces (Jilin, Hei Longjiang, Henan, Anhui,