Transport Energy Demand Research Articles

Development and application of China provincial road transport energy demand and GHG emissions analysis model

Energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of China’s road transport sector have been increasing rapidly in recent years. Previous studies on the future trends trend to focus on the national picture and cannot offer regional insights. We build a novel bottom-up model to estimate the future energy demand and GHG emissions of China’s road transport at a provincial level, considering local economic development, population and policies. Detailed technical characteristics of the future vehicle fleets are analyzed in several up-to date scenarios. The results indicate that China’s vehicle stock will keep increasing to 543 million by 2050. The total direct petroleum demand and associated GHG emissions will peak at 508 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) and 1500 million tonnes CO2 equivalent (Mt CO2,e) around 2030 in the Reference scenario. Natural gas vehicle diffusion has a large impact on petroleum demand reduction in the short term, with decreases of 41–46 Mtoe in 2050. Compared to the Reference case, battery electric and fuel cell vehicles will reduce petroleum demand by 94–157 and 28–54 Mtoe in 2050, respectively. When combined with decarbonization of future power supply, battery electric vehicles can play a significant role in reducing Well-to-Wheels GHG emissions in 2050 with 295–449 Mt CO2,e more reductions. The spatial distributions of future vehicle stock, energy demand and GHG emissions vary among provinces and show a generally downward trend from east to west. Policy recommendations are made in terms of the development of alternative fuels and vehicle technologies considering provincial differences, expansion of natural gas vehicle market and acceleration of electric vehicle market penetration.

Effect of supercapacitors directly hybridized with PEMFC on the component contribution and the performance of the system

Hybridization of a fuel cell (FC) with energy storage systems such as supercapacitors (SC) or batteries can make the fuel cell withstand the sudden fluctuations of the current. Moreover, direct hybridization of a FC with SCs (i.e. without power converters) has further proved out to be a better solution than the indirect mode (i.e. with power converters), in addition without inducing further ageing of the cell in non-steady operations. The present investigation was aimed at comparing the performance of the system in terms of yield and the component contributions of the fuel cell and the supercapacitor in power conversion on increasing the capacity of energy storage. A single 100 cm 2 cell was directly hybridized to one or three 3000 F SCs in standard fuel cell dynamic load cycling operation, simulating the energy demand in urban transport with current varying in the range 0-100 A. Upon comparing the hydrogen supply for the two configurations (1 or 3 SC), increasing the SC number decreased the hydrogen amount required in a cycle by approximately 5 %. This also enhanced the yield of the fuel cell and the hybrid source by 10 % and 16 % respectively. Moreover, increasing the SCs capacity reduces the power supplied by the FC in periods with high energy demand in cycling tests.

Comparing the Effects of Vehicle Automation, Policy-Making and Changed User Preferences on the Uptake of Electric Cars and Emissions from Transport

Switching energy demand for transport from liquid fuels to electricity is the most promising way to significantly improve air quality and reduce transport emissions. Previous studies have shown this is possible, that by 2035 the economics of alternative powertrain and energy vectors will have converged. However, they do not address whether the transition is likely or plausible. Using the UK as a case study, we present a systems dynamics model based study informed by transition theory and explore the effects of technology progress, policy-making, user preferences and; for the first time, automated vehicles on this transition. We are not trying to predict the future but to highlight what is necessary in order for different scenarios to become more or less likely. Worryingly we show that current policies with the expected technology progress and expectations of vehicle buyers are insufficient to reach global targets. Faster technology progress, strong financial incentives or a change in vehicle buyer expectations are crucial but still insufficient. In contrast, the biggest switch to alternatively fuelled vehicles could be achieved by the introduction of automated vehicles. The implications will affect policy makers, automotive manufactures, technology developers and broader society.

Providing a foundation for road transport energy demand analysis: The development of a vehicle parc model for South Africa

AbstractIt is key for national economic planning to build the tools to forecast energy demand from major sectors like transport in a credible way. As a starting point, this requires building a sufficiently detailed ‘bottom-up’ picture of technologies and their activity levels in the recent past. A vehicle parc model was developed for South Africa to feed transport demand and data on the fleet into a national energy systems model, the South African TIMES model, which is a least-cost optimisation model of the TIMES/ MARKAL family. Detailed assumptions were developed for 24 vehicle typologies that included the vintage profile, annual mileage and its relationship with age, fuel economy and its improvement over time, and occupancy and load factor. Combining these assumptions, the model was successfully calibrated over 2000–2014 with the national registration database, national fuel sales statistics and, on the freight side, with estimates of the demand for ton.km published by the University of Stellen-bosch’s Department of Logistics (2014 only). A demand for passenger.km was also calculated, which agreed well with national transport surveys. A range of detailed indicators were produced for the vehicle typologies and some interesting trends observed, including the steady dieselisation of the light vehicle fleet over the study period and the stagnation of passenger car fuel economy, despite legislation in the European Union. The present study believes that this updated data-rich picture of the road transport vehicle parc will support other studies and national policy and planning initiatives.

Use of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)-Derived Hydrogen in Ecuador: Potential Applications for Urban Transportation

This paper performs an assessment of the potential energy-purposed H2 production in Ecuador from municipal solid waste (MSW). Thermochemical and electrochemical paths are considered for MSW conversion. Ecuadorian provincial MSW distribution (2016 data) provides the base information for assessing and constructing maps of the theoretical H2 production yield and its density per unit area. Additionally, the use of H2 in fuel cell-propelled urban public transportation is proposed as an end-use consumer. Results show that it is possible to fulfil urban public transportation energy demand in 91% of the country with MSW-derived H2; in fact, the three provinces that together generate 57% of the available MSW (Guayas, Pichincha, and Azuay) could satisfy their public transportation diesel fuel demand with MSW-derived hydrogen. In the case of these three provinces, H2 generation could replace by 2.57 times (on average) the local urban transportation diesel fuel demand. Finally, a possible scenario for a non-conventional H2 production path is shown, which could also represent a suitable MSW final disposal alternative with benefits to urban mobility.

Investigation effect of hydrogen addition on the performance and exhaust emissions of Pongamia pinnata biodiesel fueled compression ignition engine

ABSTRACTIn the recent decades, the energy demand for transport and industrial sector has increased considerably. Fossil fuels which were the major fuel source for decades are no more sustainable. Biodiesel is an efficient alternative compared to depleting fossil fuels. The prospect of biodiesel as the best alternative fuel is a reliable source compared to depleting fossil fuels. Hydrogen is also considered as an attractive alternative fuel producing low emission with improved engine performance. This paper investigates the performance and emission characteristics of a single cylinder compression ignition engine using hydrogen as an inducted fuel and biodiesel, aka Pongamia pinnata as injected fuel. The experiments are conducted for different quantities of hydrogen induction through the intake manifold in order to improve the performance of the engine. The performance parameters such as brake thermal efficiency, brake specific fuel consumption, exhaust temperature and emission quantities like HC, NOX, CO, CO2 of biodiesel fueled CI engine with variable mass flow rate of hydrogen are investigated. The performances of biodiesel combined with hydrogen at varying mass flow rates are also compared. The 10 LPM hydrogen induction with biodiesel provided 0.33% increase of brake thermal efficiency compared with diesel and increase of 3.24% to biodiesel at 80% loading conditions. The emission of HC decreased by 13 ppm, CO decreased by 0.02% by volume and CO2 decreased by 3.8% by volume for biodiesel with induction of hydrogen at 10 LPM to that of neat biodiesel for 80% load conditions.

Road transport energy demand in West Africa: a test of the consumer-tolerable price hypothesis

ABSTRACTThis study estimates road transport energy demand (both aggregate energy fuel and gasoline energy fuel) in West Africa using the Pooled Mean Group Estimate and the Panel FMOLS. Primarily, we test for the nonlinearity in the price effects (hereafter referred to as the consumer-tolerable price hypothesis), which is motivated by Adom (2017. “The long-run Price Sensitivity Dynamics of Industrial and Residential Electricity Demand: The Impact of Deregulating Electricity Prices” Energy Economics 62: 43–60). First, for the baseline model, we find that, in the long-run, the energy conservation potency of pricing tools is restrained due to the presence of a rebound effect. Similar result is obtained in the short-run with evidence of cross-sectional differences. Second, in the long-run, we find that the demand–price relation is an inverted U-shaped, but we could only confirm this for Nigeria and Ghana; this suggests that, in the long-run, price disincentive tools have to be higher than a required price threshold in order to induce energy conservation behaviours in these economies.

Use of group method of data handling for transport energy demand modeling

AbstractAs transport sector takes a big share of the whole energy consumption in China, it is crucial to predict its energy demand. To forecast China's transport energy demand, group method of data handling (GMDH) was introduced. The model can help policymakers’ select influential variables and build prediction models automatically. Furthermore, it can reduce the negative impact of the noise in the Chinese statistical data. To produce comparable results, four of the six data sets used in this paper contain the same variables as in previously published research. Artificial neural networks (ANN), GMDH, multiple linear regression (MLR), and support vector machine (SVM) models were trained using fivefold cross‐validation. The performance of these models was measured in terms of coefficient of determination and root mean square error. Results showed that GMDH achieved better performance than the other models. Finally, projections were made with two scenarios. Both of the projected results showed that the energy demands peak in certain years and then decrease gradually. This study suggests that GDP is not the essential variable, while urbanization rate is an important variable to forecast the transport energy demand in China. It also suggests that Chinese government needs to prepare for the development and deployment of transport energy.

A Scenario Analysis of Road Transport Sector: the Impacts of Recent Energy Efficiency Policies

The objective of this study is to evaluate the impacts of energy efficiency policies on Thailand road transport sector. Obviously, the recent energy efficiency policies are implemented on the largest energy consumed sectors, e.g. private passenger car, small pickup truck and motorcycle which almost contributed to half of road transport energy demand. In this work, the considered policies of energy efficiency improvement include the Electric Vehicle (EV) supported measure and the CO2-based motor vehicle taxes which was implemented together with Eco-sticker labeling. The developed scenarios were defined by various successive of those considered energy saving measures and compared to baseline scenario in Business As Usual definition. Moreover, the private vehicle interdependence and regional economic difference which involve on vehicle ownership projection were also included in this study. By applied scenario analysis, the developed model shows that considered energy efficiency measures can help reduce 37.87% of total energy demand from road transport sector in 2036. Moreover, 19.04% addition of energy demand reduction can be achieved if private vehicle interdependence and regional economic difference are considered.

Households’ hourly electricity consumption and peak demand in Denmark

The electrification of residential energy demand for heating and transportation is expected to increase peak load and require additional generation and transmission capacities. Electrification also provides an opportunity to increase demand response. With a focus on household electricity consumption, we analyse the contribution of appliances and new services, such as individual heat pumps and electric vehicles, to peak consumption and the need for demand response incentives to reduce the peak.Initially, the paper presents a new model that represents the hourly electricity consumption profile of households in Denmark. The model considers hourly consumption profiles for different household appliances and their contribution to annual household electricity consumption. When applying the model to an official scenario for annual electricity consumption, assuming non-flexible consumption due to a considerable introduction of electric vehicles and individual heat pumps, household consumption is expected to increase considerably, especially peak hour consumption is expected to increase.Next the paper presents results from a new experiment where household customers are given economic and/or environmental incentives to shift consumption to or away from specified hours. The experiment focuses on the present classic consumption and shows that household customers do react to incentives, but today the flexibility of the classic consumption is limited. Considering electric vehicles and individual heat pumps, for an individual household, the consumption of each of these technologies roughly doubles the household’s consumption and considerably increases their potential for flexibility. Thus, in order to introduce incentives for demand flexibility, while considering reducing peak consumption, policy makers should initially focus on households that have a heat pump and/or an electric vehicle.

Energy planning of low carbon urban areas - Examples from Finland

During urban planning, city planners and municipal authorities make various choices that impact districts’ energy efficiency and emissions significantly. However, they often lack information about the actual effects of the design options. This paper describes a methodology, embedded to a tool called Kurke, that aims to support the planning of sustainable and energy efficient urban areas by analysing the energy performance of city plans and the impacts of their energy design alternatives on carbon dioxide emissions during planning. The methodology supports holistic energy analysis of urban areas, including energy demand of buildings and transport, and comparing 10 alternatives for local energy supply. The methodology is tested in two Finnish residential and mixed-use areas. The improved transportation plans can reduce CO2 emissions 10–20% compared to the business-as-usual design in case areas. CO2 emissions from buildings’ heating can be reduced 18–24%. The total CO2 reduction potential of urban planning choices varies from 2% to 78% in case areas. This shows the significant role of urban planning in reducing CO2 emissions. Therefore, it is important that urban planners understand the impacts of the design decisions. Kurke tool offers such support with fast and practical evaluation of the planning options.

Energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions of urban passenger transport in the Internet era: A case study of Beijing

The transport sector accounts for a large proportion of energy demand and environmental emissions and is growing rapidly. The city is the hub of modern human life and the urban transport sector is developing fast. Specifically, in the Internet era, the development of public transport has brought new challenges and opportunities to urban passenger transport. Thus, research on the energy demand and environmental emissions of the urban transport sector is significant and timely. This paper takes Beijing’s public transport as an example and applies the Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning (LEAP) model to analyze the energy demand and the main greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under different scenarios during the period 2016–2030. The results show that: 1) if the government fails to guide the development of passenger transport appropriately, its energy demand and GHG emissions will rise rapidly and under the baseline scenario, the energy demand and emissions in 2030 are about 1.8 times those oft 2015; 2) the scenarios of developing public transport and transport sharing have a significant effect of energy saving and emission reduction and in 2030 the energy demand and GHG emissions falls by 25%–30% compared with that of the baseline scenario, so the combination of public transport and transport sharing is a wise choice for the low carbon development of the passenger transport sector in Beijing; 3) scenarios of easing road congestion and new-energy and clean-energy vehicle development have huge potential for energy saving and emission reduction, particularly the internal adjustment of the energy structure in the scenario of developing new-energy and clean-energy vehicles, which can greatly reduce the demand for traditional energy sources and reduce GHG emissions. This paper illustrates the development trends of energy demand and GHG emissions in Beijing’s passenger transport sector under the scenarios of transport sharing development and traditional development in the Internet era, providing a basis for decision making.

Experimental investigation of varying composition of HCNG on performance and combustion characteristics of a SI engine

With rapid depletion of petroleum resources, researchers are investigating alternate fuels to meet global transportation energy demand. Gaseous fuels such as compressed natural gas (CNG) and hydrogen are of special interest because of their cleaner combustion characteristics compared to liquid petroleum based fossil fuels. However both these gaseous fuels have some technical issues when they are used as stand-alone alternate fuel in conventional spark ignition (SI) engines. CNG suffers from lower energy density and narrow flammability range whereas backfiring tendency is highly pronounced in hydrogen fueled engines. Hydrogen enriched compressed natural gas (HCNG) mixtures are observed to be good alternative to these individual fuels since these mixtures do not pose the issues experienced by the constituent fuels i.e. CNG and hydrogen. In this study, experiments were conducted in a spark ignited gas engine using various compositions of HCNG mixtures having 0, 10, 20, 30, 50, 70 and 100% (v/v) hydrogen fraction. The performance and combustion characteristics of these test fuels were compared with that of baseline CNG, in order to find an optimum HCNG mixture composition for a single cylinder gas engine. Results obtained showed that 30HCNG mixture delivered superior engine performance compared to other HCNG mixtures and baseline CNG, which is in sharp contrast to 15HCNG being advocated globally.

A Techno-economic Study of a Biomass Gasification Plant for the Production of Transport Biofuel for Small Communities

A techno-economic feasibility study of liquid bio-fuel production from biomass to meet the demand for public transport in small communitiesis presented. The methodology adopted in this work is based on calculating the demand of fuels required by transport sector and then estimating the amount of available biomass from various sources which can be treated to produce bio-fuels to meet the demand within the region. Depending on demand and available biomass feedstock, size and type of the gasification plant are specified. Narvik, a town in the northern part of Norway, is considered as a case study. The current demand of diesel for public transport in Narvik was calculated. The main sources of biomass in the region under consideration come basically from forests and municipal solid waste. It was found out that the potential of producing biofuel is more than three times the fuel demand for public transport, which means that excess biofuel produced can be used in other sectors such as heating. A downdraft gasifier of 6.0 MW was considered adequate to produce the required amount of biofuel. Cost analysis was performed where capital cost, operational and maintenance (O&M) costs for the biomass pre-treatment processes, the gasification plant and the gas to liquid (GTL) plant were considered in the assessment. It was concluded that the payback period of the project could be achieved within four years. The study demonstrated that biomass gasification offers small communities a means to cover their energy demand for public transport using local biomass feedstock and fulfils environmental targets of the community.

Resource efficiency of calcium silicate units

AbstractDue to the current importance of sustainability, the federal association of the calcium silicate masonry unit industry has taken intensive interest in the question of the resource efficiency of calcium silicate masonry units and construction and has carried out an extensive investigation to this end. The study subjected all stages of calcium silicate, from raw materials reserves and their extraction, production and use in building to recycling, including all transport routes and energy demands, to detailed analysis and critically examined the sustainability of calcium silicate blocks. The present article explains and evaluates the entire life cycle of calcium silicate masonry units.

Estimating transportation energy demand in Turkey using the artificial bee colony algorithm

In this study, three different mathematical models were proposed to estimate transportation energy demand of Turkey using the artificial bee colony algorithm. In the development of the models, gross domestic product, population and total annual vehicle-km were taken as parameters. For transportation energy demand estimations, linear, exponential and quadratic forms of mathematical expressions were used. A 44-year-old historical data from 1970 to 2013 were utilized for the training and testing stages of the models. The performances of the models were then evaluated by six different global error measurement approaches. The models that were developed were used in two possible scenarios to forecast transportation energy demand of Turkey for a 21-year period from 2014 to 2034. Artificial bee colony algorithm revealed the suitability of the optimization method for transportation energy planning and policy developments in Turkey. Furthermore, the results obtained from scenarios indicated that the energy demand of Turkey will be double that of 2013 by 2034.

Energy consumption analysis of the transportation sector of Senegal

Although blessed with abundant energy resources, Africa is still far from providing total energy access to its population. The amount of energy per capita consumed across the continent is very low in comparison to that observed in other continents. Literature survey shows lack of knowledge on energy system’s analysis of most countries. This study is aimed at analyzing the energy system of Senegal with focus on energy consumption in the transport sector. The analysis of the energy used in the transport sector in the period 2000–2013 shows an increasing energy demand in road transport, steady energy consumption in the maritime, and a dramatic shift in air transport. The calculated mean weighted energy efficiency of the transport sector is around 14.70%. This low performance is due to poor operating conditions surrounding the transport sector. Senegal is not an oil producing country and massive use of imported fossil fuels for electricity generation and transport raises many issues: energy security, economic vulnerability, health and pollution associated with combustion. Therefore, decarbonizing the transport system, increasing the energy independence and integrating renewable energies are major challenges for the near future.

Carbon neutral archipelago – 100% renewable energy supply for the Canary Islands

As many other small islands and archipelagos, the Canary Islands depend to a high degree on energy imports. Despite its small surface, the archipelago has a high potential for renewable energy (RE) technologies. In this paper, we present a scenario pathway to a 100% RE supply in the Canary Islands by 2050. It relies on a back-casting approach linking the bottom-up accounting framework Mesap-PlaNet and the high resolution power system model REMix. Our analysis shows that locally available technology potentials are sufficient for a fully renewable supply of the islands’ power, heat, and land transport energy demands. To follow the pathway for achieving a carbon neutral supply, expansion of RE technology deployment needs to be accelerated in the short-term and efforts towards greater energy efficiency must be increased. According to our results, an extended linkage between energy sectors through electric vehicles as well as electric heating, and the usage of synthetic hydrogen can contribute notably to the integration of intermittent RE power generation. Furthermore, our results highlight the importance of power transmission in RE supply systems. Supply costs are found 15% lower in a scenario considering sea cable connections between all islands.

Low carbon pathways for light goods vehicles in Ireland

Transport is the most significant energy consuming sector in Ireland, accounting for 40% of final energy demand in 2013, with private cars and road freight contributing 51% and 25% to transport energy demand respectively. Despite a large literature body analysing private car energy use, there has been very little published analysis on freight transport, which itself has largely been limited to one aspect of freight transport, namely heavy goods vehicles (HGVs). This paper focuses on the energy and related CO2 emissions associated with light goods vehicles (LGVs) in Ireland, which contributes to addressing the knowledge gap in freight transport energy use. Low carbon pathways for LGV transport in Ireland, which align with an 80% CO2 emissions reduction by 2050 (relative to 1990), were developed using scenario analysis and a multi-model approach, which included i) the Irish TIMES energy systems model – a least cost optimisation model of the Irish energy system - and ii) an LGV stock model for Ireland – a sectoral simulation model of LGVs in Ireland. The introduction of energy efficiency measures and indigenous gaseous biofuels were found to be key elements in a technically feasible roadmap, which can meet the required CO2 emissions reduction target.

Uses of weeds as an economical alternative to processed wood biomass and fossil fuels

The use of fossil fuels as a main source of energy is directly linked to global climate change (due to CO2 emission), so there is a necessity to find new, cheap and easily available energy sources for the earth’s inhabitants. Nowadays renewable energy sources are forced also for the mitigation of the effects of climate change as a result of greenhouse gases emission control. Decentralized sources of low-cost renewable fuels that may be used, in particular, in those households where there is no possibility of using gas or heat delivered from other sources should be of special interest. This paper describes the possibility of using untreated plants such as Canadian goldenrod (Solidago canadensis L.), mugwort wormwood (Artemisia absinthium L.) and common tansy (Tanacetum vulgare L.) as a source of biofuels. These plants are considered weeds and have many advantages, enabling a wider use for energy purposes, especially in cases where there is a large acreage of land set aside. Clean, full-biogenic, renewable fuel without transportation energy demand and taxes is an interesting economical alternative to usually expensive processed wood biomass, such as pellets or briquettes. The following parameters of the studied fuels were investigated: the yield per hectare, density of growth, dry matter content during the harvest, bulk density, ash content and calorific value. Results revealed that the investigated species could be considered as great primary energy sources due high calorific value (over 16MJkg−1), low moisture, low costs and availability. Canadian Goldenrod was found to be especially promising since it covers most of uncultivated land and could be burned in large number of rural households without boiler and heating system change.