Municipal Fleet Vehicle Electrification and Photovoltaic Power In the City of Pittsburgh.

摘要

This document reports the results of a cost benefit analysis on potential photovoltaic projects in Pittsburgh and electrifying the city’s light duty civilian vehicle fleet. Currently the city of Pittsburgh has a civilian passenger vehicle fleet of 118 vehicles travelling 718,000 miles a year. This leads to an average (5 days a week) travel of 23.4 miles per work day per vehicle. We used a gasoline price of range of $1.50, $2.00 and $2.50 a gallon and electric price range of 4, 6 and 10 cents per kWh. We found that conventional vehicles would likely cost less to operate over 15 years than electric vehicles. This is due to the increased capital costs involved in purchasing the vehicles and charging stations, as well as the amount of miles these vehicles travel per year. To account for the of impacts of vehicle electrification on emissions we calculated the CO2, NOx and SO2 emissions from both a conventional and electric fleet. For electricity emissions we investigated several electric grid assumptions including current regional grid average, current regional grid marginal at night, current regional grid with 30% RECs, and a regional grid starting with 30% RECs and increasing to 100% over 15 years. The city is currently purchasing RECs for 30% of its municipal power needs. For GHG emissions, we found that EVs in Pittsburgh save GHGs compared to conventional gasoline vehicles in 3 of our 4 current electricity grid assumptions. As the GHG--intensity of the grid improves over the next 15 years, BEVs have clear GHG advantages over conventional gasoline vehicles in Pittsburgh. The City of Pittsburgh has indicated if will transition to purchasing RECs for 100% of governmental energy use by 2030. While there challenges with attributing local air pollutant reductions directly to RECs on a one--? to--?one basis, the combination of existing and proposed EPA power plant regulations and REC purchases highly increase the likelihood of a cleaner grid profile going forward. Yet SO2 emissions from the power sector remain problematic in a social net present cost analysis. SO2 was the highest cost pollutant for vehicle externalities and is not emitted in significant amount from gasoline combustion. Because of the SO2 emissions, vehicle electrification was also found to be likely to have higher total social emissions costs than gasoline options under most cases. A faster reduction in power plant air emissions improves the outlook for electrification.