Happy Thursday friends! Here’s my weekly take on the five most interesting developments in LCFV trends over the last week.
According to a report from UBS obtained by the Financial Times this week, diesel will “almost disappear” from the global car market within 10 years as it faces a “perfect storm” of competition from cheaper electric cars and tougher stances by regulators. UBS projects that the falling costs of electric and hybrid vehicles will strip the fuel of its once-competitive price advantage in Europe, while tighter emissions regulation and soured public sentiment towards diesel in the wake of Dieselgate will see its global share of car sales fall from 13.5% to just 4% by 2025.
In diesel-dominant Europe, sales will fall from 50% to 10%, and sales declines have accelerated in the past year because of Dieselgate. UBS expects sales of 48V cars to overtake diesel sales globally in 2021, and to account for a 25% of all cars sold by 2025. Diesel will remain dominant in heavy-duty trucks and large SUVs and keep in mind, oil demand (mainly diesel) for freight transport (globally, but also in Europe) will increase through 2040, as the figure below shows.
Researchers from the University of Surrey and University of Bristol have tested new supercapacitor technology developed by UK firm Augmented Optics and given it the thumbs up as a viable storage medium, noting that the breakthrough material could render Lithium-ion batteries completely obsolete. A new material developed by the company can fully charge a mobile phone in seconds and provide about 240 kilometers (150 miles) of driving range for an EV in just minutes. The research team plans to build an EV prototype next year to test the range issue.
Based on a new polymer the supercapacitor technology is said to be 1,000 times more effective than current supercapacitors, which charge quickly but also discharge their energy equally rapidly. As a result, they’ve been unsuitable for laptops, phones and cars, but the researchers say that could all change if the tests can be repeated in real-world scenarios. The new polymers could also be applied in bioelectronics, wearable electronics and advanced optics.
Lux’s view, based on a study it just released and is selling, is that California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) may become a global norm for government policies to meet GHG emissions reduction goals. Read more about it here.
An interesting dynamic is at play as President-Elect Trump prepares to assume the presidency in January 2017. Read more about that here.
This week the European Parliament and Council signed into law the new National Emissions Ceilings (NEC) Directive, based on a European Commission proposal that sets stricter limits on the five main pollutants in Europe. These pollutants are: sulfur, ammonia, volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides (NOx) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5). The reductions required are shown in the figure below.
It will enter into force Dec. 31, 2016. When fully implemented, the Commission notes the Directive will reduce by almost 50% the negative health impacts of air pollution, such as respiratory diseases and premature death, by 2030. The Commission estimates that 450,000 people in Europe die every year because of air pollution.
Member states must transpose the Directive into national legislation by June 30, 2018 and produce a National Air Pollution Control Programme by 2019 setting out measures to ensure that emissions of the five main air pollutants are reduced by the percentages agreed by 2020 and 2030. They must also coordinate with plans in fields such as transport, agriculture, energy and climate. It will be interesting to see if there are additional transport measures introduced by member states to comply with the directive. A comprehensive review of the emission inventories of all member states on which the implementation of the Directive relies will take place next year, to ensure robust accounting of the actual pollutant emissions in Europe.
As I noted recently, air quality has worsened in Europe, according to the European Environment Agency (EEA) with PM and nitrogen dioxide emissions a major concern. In its annual report on air quality in Europe, EEA blamed coal and biomass burning industries, power plants and households for hundreds of thousands of premature deaths across Europe, despite improvements to air quality in recent decades.
The report provided new estimates of the health impacts of the most harmful air pollutants based on 2013 data. Exposure to PM2.5 was responsible for about 467,000 premature deaths in 41 European countries in 2013. The estimated impacts of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ground-level ozone (O3) exposure were around 71,000 and 17,000 premature deaths, respectively, in Europe. The following graphic shows EU urban population exposure to harmful levels of air pollutant concentrations between 2012-2014 under both EU targets and World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.
The air quality situation in some European cities such as London and Paris has gotten so bad that the mayors there have taken the step to curtail or even ban diesel vehicles which emit PM.
