Contribution to the 2010 ISEE conference: Advancing Sustainability in a Time of Crisis

Vehicle technologies and shifts in modal split as mitigation options towards a 2°C climate target Robert Pietzcker1*, Richard Moll*, Nico Bauer*, Gunnar Luderer* In this paper, we analyze different decarbonisation options for the transport sector with a modified version of the hybrid energy-economy-climate model ReMIND. ReMIND is an intertemporal optimization model that allows the analysis of long-term transitions of the global energy system under the constraint of an upper limit on global mean temperature change. The newly-implemented transport sector is modeled through explicit vehicle technologies, which are then aggregated by constant elasticity of substitution functions into transport modes. The transport sector is fully linked to the other energy sectors and interacts with them through resource prices, carbon prices and competition for investments. Our preliminary results strongly indicate that within our purely techno-economic modeling framework, the transport sector undergoes only little decarbonization while the other energy sectors strongly decarbonize to achieve the required 50 % chance of keeping global warming below 2°C. The small transport decarbonization that can be observed is mostly achieved by a fuel switch to second-generation biofuels and compressed natural gas, and some modal shift towards train use. Under our default cost assumptions, new vehicle technologies like hybrid cars only achieve some market penetration around 2070, while battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) and fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) never enter the market. The main reason that allows the model to stay below 2°C warming even though the transport sector is still heavily dependent on oil is the availability of second-generation biomass, which can be combined with carbon capture and storage to produce negative emissions. When testing the importance of biomass for the transport sector by reducing the total biomass potential from 200EJ to 100EJ, both hydrogen FCVs and BEVs are deployed by the end of the century. 1