California's climate and energy policy for transportation

Sperling, Daniel; Eggert, Anthony

doi:10.1016/j.esr.2014.10.001

Cited by 36 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 4 publications

(7 reference statements)

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“…A single policy instrument (simply referred to as a policy) is not likely to be enough to realistically achieve climate targets. Rather, evidence suggests that an integrative mix of strong policies is needed to induce a low-carbon transition, likely a combination of pricing mechanisms, subsidies, regulations and infrastructure implementation [13][14][15][16][17][18][19] . Transport researchers have understudied rationales and approaches for policy mixes as well as the complexities of policy interactions 19,20 .…”

Section: The Importance and Complexity Of Policy Mixesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crafting strong, integrated policy mixes for deep CO2 mitigation in road transport

Axsen

Plötz

Wolinetz³

2020

Nat. Clim. Chang.

179

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hile present transport systems provide numerous benefits, the negative societal impacts are enormous. In particular, the global transportation sector is responsible for almost one-quarter of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (mostly CO 2), with about 72% thereof from road transport 1. Despite decades of progress for alternative and low-carbon fuels and technologies, most developed countries remain locked-in to the dominance of privately owned, fossil fuel-powered vehicles 2,3. Transport emissions are expected to grow further in scenarios produced by the International Energy Agency (IEA), even if currently announced policies are implemented (Fig. 1) 4-6. This Perspective summarizes available evidence for which policy mixes can be highly effective in reducing GHG emissions within road transport in the long-term while pointing out directions for further policy and research development. Clearly the transportation sector needs to carry its weight in meeting deep decarbonization goals. Compared to 2019, both the 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C Paris Agreement scenarios require global GHG reductions of about 30-40% by 2030, 60-80% by 2050 and likely close to 100% (or zero net emissions) thereafter 5,7. GHG mitigation ambitions are higher in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries because they are the source of most historical emissions and are thought to have more flexibility for large-scale investment in low-carbon technologies 8. Because expected mitigation costs are lower in road transport than in aviation or shipping 9-11 , we start with the assumption that road transport should at least proportionally fulfil the ambition of the total mitigation targets noted above. That said, emissions from aviation and shipping are growing more quickly and require additional GHG mitigation policies 2. We focus on national and regional policymaking. Cities are important in the transition towards more sustainable transport, but their scope for governmental climate change action tends to be smaller than on the national level 12. While we identify insights with global relevance, most of the available literature analyses developed countries, mainly in Europe and North Americapointing to a clear research need to better understand climate policy design for developing countries. Further, our analysis focuses more on passenger travel which is responsible for most GHG emissions in transport, though we call for more attention to road freight.

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Section: The Importance and Complexity Of Policy Mixesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crafting strong, integrated policy mixes for deep CO2 mitigation in road transport

Axsen

Plötz

Wolinetz³

2020

Nat. Clim. Chang.

179

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“…This highlights that respondents saw performing PEBs as doing the right thing, which may also indicate past exposure to pro-environmental social norms. California has been a leader of environmental policy since the 1960s (Sperling and Eggert, 2014), which has involved conveying various pro-environmental messaging to residents over the years.…”

Section: Specification Of Symbolic Attributes Reflecting Aspects Of Smentioning

confidence: 99%

You are what you drive: Environmentalist and social innovator symbolism drives electric vehicle adoption intentions

White

Sintov

2017

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice

132

103

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Electric vehicles (EVs) have the potential to dramatically reduce vehicle emissions contributing to climate change without significantly reducing convenience or mobility. Despite their potential, EV market share remains low, necessitating research to identify factors that could encourage more widespread adoption. For instance, concern about climate change is associated with intent to adopt an EV, but little is known about mechanisms through which this concern may translate into action. This study builds on previous work investigating the roles of symbolic and instrumental attributes in low-emission vehicle adoption, focusing exclusively on EVs to better understand perceptions associated with their unique technical capabilities. Prior work has examined symbolism rather generally (e.g., in terms of status). We examine specific aspects of self-identity that EVs may reflect, representing the extent to which consumers perceive EVs as symbols that they are environmentalists and/or social innovators. In addition, extending prior work, we quantify the relative influence of these separate aspects of symbolism on EV adoption intentions alongside instrumental, psychological, and demographic factors. We find differing impacts of these two symbols on EV adoption intentions. Environmentalist symbolism is consistently the strongest predictor of adoption, across three dependent variables. Innovator symbolism predicts willingness to lease/buy an EV, trailing only environmentalist symbolism in effect size, and outperforming instrumental attributes as well as psychological and demographic factors. Additionally, we examine a potential mechanism through which concern about climate change may translate into EV adoption intentions: we find that seeing EVs as environmentalist and social innovator symbols partially mediates the relationship between concern about climate change and EV adoption intentions. These results have implications for EV marketing and policy, and suggest that emphasizing the potential for EVs to reinforce specific selfidentities may be a more promising strategy to increase adoption rates than emphasizing instrumental attributes such as fuel efficiency. Additionally, efforts are being made to integrate EVs into the power grid using "Vehicle to Grid" 49 technology, whereby EV batteries are used as distributed storage. In light of this emerging technology, a 50 large EV fleet could offer additional benefits to the power sector including power grid regulation, 51 spinning reserve, peak load shaving, and load leveling (Tan et al., 2016). In some situations, it may even be possible for EVs to obviate the need for additional electricity generation, for instance, by discharging unused battery energy back onto the grid during peak demand periods (Jochem et al., 2015). Despite these advantages and various government subsidies, EVs accounted for only 0.7% of U.S. market share in 2015 (IEA, 2016). Although the availability of financial incentives is positively correlated with EV adoption rates, price signals represent only one ...

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“…Collantes and Sperling (2008) provide a review of ZEV policy origins and history, drawing on discussion with policy founders and stakeholders and identifying motivations for how and why various aspects of ZEV policy were constructed. Sperling and Eggert (2014) argue that ZEV accomplishes a necessary role in the transportation sector to meet California's aggressive energy and climate targets for 2030 and beyond, in part because market mechanisms, such as carbon taxes or capand-trade programs, face huge political resistance and fail to address a number of market failures. While automakers resisted ZEV policy, Wesseling et al (2014; observe an industry transition from defensive toward acceptance and eventual proactive support for the socio-technical change.…”

Section: State Zero Emission Vehicle Programsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alternative-fuel-vehicle policy interactions increase U.S. greenhouse gas emissions

Jenn

Azevedo

Michalek

2019

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice

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The transportation sector is currently the largest contributor of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States, and light-duty vehicles produce the majority of transportation emissions. Federal standards for fleet-averaged vehicle GHG emission rates and their corresponding corporate average fuel economy standards cap GHG emissions of the US light-duty vehicle fleet. In addition, two key policies aim to encourage a future fleet transition to alternative fuel vehicle (AFV) technologies: (1) incentives that treat AFVs favorably in the federal GHG standard, and (2) state zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) policy, which mandates AFV sales in some states. While each of these AFV policies can encourage AFV adoption, we show that net GHG emissions increase when both policies are present simultaneously. Specifically, we estimate changes in life cycle GHG emissions and gasoline consumption, relative to a pure federal fleet GHG standard (without AFV incentives or mandates), resulting from the introduction of (1) AFV incentives in federal fleet GHG policy, (2) state ZEV mandates, and (3) the combination of the two. We find that under fairly general conditions the combined AFV policies produce higher GHG emissions than either policy alone. This result is a consequence of state mandates increasing AFV sales in the presence of federal incentives that relax the fleet GHG standard when AFVs are sold. Using AFV sales projections from the Energy Information Administration and the California Air Resources Board, we estimate that the combined policies produce an increase on the order of 100 million tons of CO2 emissions cumulatively for new passenger cars sold from 2012 through 2025 relative to a pure GHG standard. AFV incentives in the GHG standard conflate policy goals by encouraging AFV adoption at the cost of higher fleet GHG emissions, and they permit even higher fleet GHG emissions when other policies, such as the ZEV mandate, increase AFV adoption.

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California's climate and energy policy for transportation

Cited by 36 publications

References 4 publications

Crafting strong, integrated policy mixes for deep CO2 mitigation in road transport

Crafting strong, integrated policy mixes for deep CO2 mitigation in road transport

You are what you drive: Environmentalist and social innovator symbolism drives electric vehicle adoption intentions

Alternative-fuel-vehicle policy interactions increase U.S. greenhouse gas emissions

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