Peter de Haan

More or Better? A Model for Changes in Household Greenhouse Gas Emissions Due to Higher Income

Households exert an important influence on total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Therefore, their consumption behavior is of interest in evaluations of climate policy options and projections of future emission paths. While most evaluations of household consumption and its emissions are based on expenditure only, we use a household consumption model based on functional units (e.g., kg food, person kilometers, living square meters). The goal of this article is to assess changes in consumption with increasing affluence level of households and to compare the allocation of GHG emissions to monetary versus functional units. We find that (1) the model based on functional units provides good bottom-up estimates for greenhouse emissions of Swiss households; (2) quality (price per functional unit) increases with income for many consumption categories, and therefore using functional instead of monetary units leads to a lower increase of greenhouse gas emissions with income; (3) the relevance of GHG emissions from goods and mobility will increase. We conclude that using household models based on monetary units only overestimates the impact of marginal consumption and neglects the potential of decoupling income and environmental impact by consuming better instead of more. For sustainable consumption, research and policy should aim at preventing goods of higher quality from having higher environmental impact in order to benefit from the increasing quality orientation with rising income.

Comparison of Buyers of Hybrid and Conventional Internal Combustion Engine Automobiles: Characteristics, Preferences, and Previously Owned Vehicles

Two factors are important for assessment of the fuel-saving potential of hybrid vehicles. First is the future market share, which depends on the present status of hybrid vehicles in the technology adoption life cycle. The latter can be assessed by examination of characteristics and preferences of hybrid vehicle buyers. Second is consumer behavior, with the key issue being whether the purchase of a new hybrid vehicle is related to abovetrend increases in vehicle size or vehicle ownership. Two groups were surveyed: (a) all buyers of the hybrid car Toyota Prius 2 in Switzerland in the first 9 months after the vehicle entered the market and (b) a control group of buyers of conventional internal combustion engine Toyota Corolla and Avensis. Hybrid car buyers had a significantly higher household income and education level. They rated fuel consumption and technology higher at the expense of other criteria, such as brand preferences and design. It was concluded that hybrid vehicles were still mostly bought by con...

Modelling fuel consumption and pollutant emissions based on real-world driving patterns: the HBEFA approach

Emissions of passenger cars and light-duty vehicles with complex exhaust gas after-treatment are difficult to predict, especially if the prediction is only based on kinematic parameters without vehicle-specific data. A new method for modelling fleet emission factors based on testbench data is presented. It has been used for modern passenger cars and light-duty vehicles (EURO-2 and -3) in the new version 2.1 of the German-Austrian-Swiss Handbook Emission Factors for Road Transport (HBEFA). The new method, not relying on vehicle-specific data, avoids decomposing the measured real-world driving behaviour and all associated uncertainties. Emission factors can be predicted for any given driving pattern which is characterised through kinematic parameters or representative time series of vehicle speed. The methodology determines the linear combination of measured driving patterns that is most representative for the driving pattern whose emissions are to be predicted. The approach is illustrated using testbench real-world measurements of 44 passenger cars of technology stages EURO-2 and -3.

Applied comprehensive NO2 and particulate matter dispersion modelling for Switzerland

This paper presents the NO2 and Particulate Matter (PM) dispersion modelling for the whole of Switzerland. Air quality maps are computed for the year 2000 and future years. Future developments like the EURO-4 legislation on motor vehicles are taken into account. For all major source groups (road traffic, off-road traffic, industry, households, etc.), separate countrywide emission inventories with a spatial resolution of 200 m are used. Dispersion modelling is performed by applying transfer functions to each cell of every inventory. These functions have been computed with a Gaussian plume model using several years of hourly meteorological data. Different functions reflect the source group characteristics (emission height, time series of emission strength, etc.) and the micro-climatology (for three Swiss regions: Swiss Plateau, alpine valleys and remaining part of Switzerland). In the Alpine valleys, the transfer functions are aligned to the main wind direction in order to better reflect the dispersion conditions in mountainous terrain. Emission and dispersion modelling is performed for NOx at first; the NO2 concentration is then estimated using a parameterised oxidation function. For PM, primary particles up to 2.5 µm, primary particles in the size range 2.5-10 µm, secondary particles from gaseous precursors and the imported background concentration are modelled separately and then summed up. The predicted concentration level for 2000 is validated using measurements from monitoring stations. A good agreement is found. In 2000, 1.2% (505 km²) of the total surface of Switzerland exhibits a mean NO2 concentration above the 30 µg/m³ air quality standard (grid cell average). In this area, 25.0% of the population (1.72 million persons) have their home location. In 2000, ca. 5.5% (2300 km² of the land surface are exposed to concentrations above the air quality standard of 20 µg/m³ for PM10; 41.3% of the population lives there.

LCA of mobility solutions: approaches and findings—66th LCA forum, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, 30 August, 2017

LCA of mobility solutions : approaches and findings—66th LCA forum, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, 30 August, 2017