Abstract
Transportation dominates environmental and energy security threats to the world. Light-duty vehicles (LDVs—cars and trucks) accounted for 45.6 % of all the oil consumed by the USA in 2009 and 37.4 % of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Assuming that economic growth resumes after the 2008–2009 global recession, US vehicle sales and annual miles traveled per vehicle will most likely resume their historical upward trajectories (although probably not as steeply) which will lead to a steady increase in urban air pollution, GHG emissions, and oil consumption, unless we change the way we power our cars, trucks, buses, planes, trains, and ships. Our petroleum consumption and pollution from vehicles in the USA is exacerbated by long travel distances, minimal mass transit, and very low fuel taxes compared to the rest of the world.
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Notes
- 1.
Total US transportation (including all heavy-duty trucks, planes and ships in addition to LDVs) consumed 71 % of all oil, but LDVs accounted for 64 % of the total transportation oil consumption for a net consumption of 0.64 × 0.71 = 45.6 %.
- 2.
All transportation vehicles generated 57.3 % of all US GHGs in 2009, of which LDVs accounted for 65.2 % or 0.573 × 0.652 = 37.4 %.
- 3.
Or on a fuel cell EV; hydrogen-powered fuel cell EVs also have batteries to increase peak power and to allow the capture of energy while braking, called “regenerative braking,” and these batteries can be charged from the grid at night; the very first plug-in electric vehicle by a major auto company was a prototype plug-in fuel cell EV made by the Ford Motor Company on their Edge platform in the early 2000s.
- 4.
This estimate is based on total cumulative hybrid EV sales of 2.18 M in the USA; 1.5 M in Japan, and 0.45 M in the EU through September 2012, which is 1.89 times the USA cumulative hybrid EV sales by that time.
- 5.
Although in principle biofuels or natural gas could be converted to hydrogen onboard a vehicle with a small chemical plant to power fuel cell EV, onboard reforming was attempted in the 1990s, particularly for methanol which can be reformed into hydrogen at lower temperature than other fuels, but most auto companies have now concluded that onboard reforming is too expensive and hydrogen will most likely be stored as a compressed gas on fuel cell EVs, and all FCEVs being sold, leased, or tested on the road today use compressed hydrogen as the primary fuel.
- 6.
Hydrogen for fueling FCEVs is already being generated from waste at the Orange County Sanitation District WWTP in Fountain Valley, California.
- 7.
GHG emissions could be negative if the hydrogen was made from the anaerobic digester gas (ADG) that is emitted from existing municipal waste water treatment plants. Methane, a gas that is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a GHG, is sometimes vented or flared from WWTPs. Converting this wasted gas to hydrogen for use in (FCEVs) would decrease GHG emissions compared to current practice.
- 8.
Stover includes the non-edible roots and stalks of the corn plant.
Reference
Hybrid electric vehicle sales, available at http://www.afdc.energy.gov/data/categories/afvs-and-hevs
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Thomas, C.E.(. (2015). Introduction. In: Sustainable Transportation Options for the 21st Century and Beyond. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16832-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16832-6_1
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