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The potential of carbon dioxide emission reductions in German commercial transport by electric vehicles

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Abstract

Climate change is a serious challenge of today. In order to reach the ambiguous mitigation scenarios for greenhouse gases, strong efforts are to be undertaken. Electric vehicles are seen as a potential mean to reduce emissions and energy import dependencies of most western societies. So far, the progress toward more electric vehicles in individual passenger transport is still slow. The objective to increase the share of electric vehicles of many national governments seems to be rather ambitious. In commercial transport, mileage is usually higher, trips are planned more precisely, and driving patterns are more regular than those of private vehicles. With these and other promising factors, we assume a high potential of electric vehicles in commercial transport. Therefore, we analyze in this paper the commercial transport in Germany and especially the large share of light commercial vehicles in order to make these potentials explicit. Based on German survey data, we analyze the heterogeneous German economic sectors with top-down statistical values like daily distance categories and bottom-up values like driving and parking behaviors. By way of example, German postal services are evaluated in detail, which leads to an electrification potential of between 60,750 and 105,550 vehicles. In case of “green” electricity for charging, postal services can avoid up to 882,000 \({\text{t}}_{{{\text{CO}}_{ 2} }} /{\text{a}}\), which is about 40–70 %.

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Notes

  1. Light commercial vehicles are defined excluding passenger cars. Light duty vehicles (LDV) include both LCV and passenger cars.

  2. We use “postal services” for all delivery services such as courier, parcel, express, and postal services.

  3. Many privately owned vehicles are used for commercial purposes vice versa.

  4. Transportation and storage (H) includes commercial passenger transport, transport of goods, postal services, and storage activities.

  5. The survey data are available in different data formats. We use the SPSS files and the SPSS software for evaluation.

  6. One hundred and fifty kilometers is chosen here for being a range that can be reached by some current BEV, e.g., Smart E-Drive and Citroen C-Zero.

  7. Professional, scientific, and technical activities (M) include legal advice, tax consulting, accountant activities, consulting activities, architects, research and development activities, market research and advertising, and other freelance work.

  8. In Germany, household sockets have a (theoretical) maximum power of 3.7 kW based on 16 A/230 V, which leads to about 7.5 h for a fully charge of a battery capacity of 27 kWh.

  9. With a fast charging system (22 kW, mode 3 AC charging), about 75 min is needed for full charging.

  10. No intersection is given by subtracting the single values by 100 %.

  11. Annual mileages of single vehicles cannot be calculated properly. They are calculated based on the 1 day survey.

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Acknowledgments

This research is part of the project iZEUS (01ME12013) which is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi).

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  1. Institute of Energy and Climate Research – Systems Analysis and Technology Evaluation (IEK-STE), Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425, Jülich, Germany

    T. Ketelaer

  2. Chair of Energy Economics, Institute for Industrial Production (IIP), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hertzstraße 16, 76187, Karlsruhe, Germany

    T. Kaschub, P. Jochem & W. Fichtner

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Ketelaer, T., Kaschub, T., Jochem, P. et al. The potential of carbon dioxide emission reductions in German commercial transport by electric vehicles. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 11, 2169–2184 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-014-0631-y

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