Alternate Fuel Vehicles

Electric vehicles (EV) are promoted as a foreseeable future vehicle technology to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions associated with conventional vehicles. This paper proposes a data-driven approach to improving the electrification rate of the vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by a taxi fleet in Beijing. Specifically, based on the gathered real-time vehicle trajectory data of 46,765 taxis in Beijing, we conduct time-series simulations to derive insight for the public charging station deployment plan, including the locations of public charging stations, the number of...

The use of airport gate electrification infrastructure in the form of ground power (GP) and preconditioned air (PCA) systems can reduce energy and maintenance costs, emissions, and health risks by limiting the use of aircraft auxiliary power unit (APU) engines at the gate. However, their benefits can only be gained when they are actually being used; otherwise, pilots keep APUs on to fulfill their aircraft’s demands for electrical power and air conditioning. GP and PCA systems require a large initial infrastructure investment to increase energy efficiency, and they are installed with the...

As interest in hydrogen as an energy carrier has increased, the various ways that hydrogen is made are being categorized as “green,” “blue,” “gray,” and other colors in relation to their environmental impact. While these categorizations are somewhat useful to indicate the environmental and climate change impacts of different production pathways, they are not especially useful for policy making or industry decisionmaking purposes because they are subjective. For example, most definitions of green pathways for hydrogen production only include electrolysis from renewable electricity sources;...

Estimating the producer surplus – the revenue above the average long-run cost – is an important part of social cost-benefit analyses of changes in petroleum use. This paper estimates the producer surplus associated with changes in gasoline fuel use in the United States, and then applies the estimates of producer surplus to two kinds of social cost-benefit analyses related to petroleum use: (1) estimating the wealth transfer from consumers to producers as a result of policies that affect oil use and oil imports to the US, and (2) comparing the actual average cost of gasoline with the...