Reports & Papers

China has ambitious goals for developing and deploying electric vehicles (EV). The stated intention is to “leapfrog” the auto industries of other countries and seize the emerging EV market. Since 2009, policies have included generous subsidies for consumers in certain locations, as well as strong pressure on local governments to purchase EVs. Yet four years into the program, progress has fallen far short of the intended targets. China has only about 40,000 EVs on the road, of which roughly 80% are public fleet vehicles such as buses and sanitation vehicles.

For the past forty years, United States Presidents have repeatedly called for a reduction in the country's dependence on fossil fuels in general and foreign oil specifically. Some officials advocate the electrification of the passenger vehicle fleet as a path to meeting this goal. The Obama administration has embraced a goal of having one million electric-powered vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015, while others proposed a medium-term goal where electric vehicles would consist of 20% of the passenger vehicle fleet by 2030 — approximately 30 million electric vehicles. The technology itself is not in question; many of the global automobile companies are planning to sell plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and/or battery electric vehicles (BEVs) by 2012. The key question is, will Americans buy them?

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation will be a much bigger challenge than conventional wisdom assumes — requiring substantially higher fuel prices combined with more stringent regulation. This paper finds that reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the transportation sector 14% below 2005 levels by 2020 may require gas prices greater than $7/gallon by 2020. It also finds that while relying on subsidies for electric or hybrid vehicles is politically seductive, it is ineffective and extremely expensive.

This study examines different policy scenarios for reducing GHG emissions and oil consumption in the U.S. transportation sector using a variant of the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS).

This paper investigates the relationship between the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program and the supply of biofuels in the United States.

The goal of this paper is to contribute to the current policy debate about how to effectively limit or reduce oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. transportation sector.

This short paper is intended to outline the primary policy options available to the Chinese government to ensure that low-sulfur fuels become widely available in China to provide cleaner air and the ability to deploy more advanced vehicle technology. 

The report contains detailed policy recommendations for addressing oil security, climate change, natural gas supply, the future of nuclear energy, and other long-term challenges, and is backed by more than 30 original research studies.

Increasing demand for clean fuels in Eurasia heightens the importance of assessing the prospects for available supplies of natural gas. 

The National Commission on Energy Policy proposes revised policies regarding a cap and trade proposal for addressing global climate change, increases in fuel economy standards, approaches for the storage of nuclear waste, development and deployment of advanced coal technologies, adoption of a national renewable energy standard, and other major energy policy issues.