Coupling Efficient Vehicles with Renewable Energy

June 17, 2016

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by Brigitte Buchmann, Christian Bach (Phys.Org) Newly registered private cars must meet certain defined CO2 emission standards, and these are expected to be made more stringent in the forthcoming revision of the national regulations, in parallel with similar EU legislation. Empa, PSI and BFH have taken this opportunity to recommend an additional measure to increase the effectiveness of the new standards. They suggest that the authorities allow combinations of efficient vehicles with renewable energies to be considered as single units, with the resulting, proven reduction in CO2 emission to be used for determining compliance with the emission standard. A proposal being discussed by the Swiss National Council over the next few days follows a similar line of argument.

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Alternative drive techniques (such as hybrid, electric and fuel cell based systems) and renewable fuels are being discussed as measures to cut carbon dioxide emissions. Alternative drives are, however, primarily methods to improve efficiency. A decisive reduction in overall CO2 emissions can only be achieved through the use of fuels based on renewable energy sources. This fact is, however, not given adequate weighting in today's legislation covering private vehicles. From the scientific point of view, therefore, the current regulations urgently need to be modified, as proposed by Empa, PSI and BFH in their white paper regarding the revision of the CO2 emission regulations.

The recommendation for the revision of the CO2 legislation is based on the introduction of combined vehicle-fuel units (initially only applied to vehicles with internal combustion engines):

It should be permitted in future to sell vehicles in combination with a fuel packet.
The (proven) reduction in emissions achieved through the use of the fuel packet should be accepted as the relevant value in terms of the CO2 legislation for that particular vehicle-fuel combination.
These measures should be limited to vehicles which are already efficient (i.e. those which already meet the relevant CO2 emission targets) and be valid only for synthetic fuels, since biogenic renewable fuels have already been granted tax relief within the framework of the mineral oil duty legislation.

In this context, renewable energy primarily means hydroelectric power (which in today's electric power market is no longer economic, particularly in summer) and renewable electric power (such as photovoltaic power produced at midday during the summer), both of which must be stored. READ MORE