An Approach to Study Impact of Public Policy, Exogenous Variables, and Vehicle Design on Greenhouse Gas Emission

The aim of this paper is to study the impact of public policies and uncontrollable (exogenous) variables as well as optimal vehicle design on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the US transportation sector. The overall model is divided into the government model and an enterprise model. To examine the effect of GHG emissions and exogenous variables, the optimization model includes public policy, exogenous variables, and a market mix focusing on the GHG effects of four different types of vehicles, 1) gasoline-based 2) gasolineelectric hybrid or alternative-fuel vehicles (AFVs), 3) batteryelectric (BEVs) and 4) fuel-cell vehicles (FCVs). The public policies taken into consideration are infrastructure investments for hydrogen fueling stations and subsidies for purchasing AFVs. An exogenous variable taken into consideration are gasoline prices. For each selection of public policy and exogenous variables in the government model, the enterprise model finds the optimum vehicle design that maximizes profit and updates the market mix, from which the government model can estimate GHG emissions for that selection and can choose a public policy accordingly to produce a desired effect. This paper demonstrates the model using FCV design as an illustrative example. © 2012 by ASME