Evaluating CO2-reduction potential of EV incentives across European Cities and Regions

The challenge facing Europe to reduce GHG emissions is considerable. Increasing the proportion of electric vehicles (EVs) is considered a viable solution. However, EVs primarily offers a societal benefit and their uptake has been limited. Incentivisation is one approach to increasing the number of EVs on the road and one that has been adopted by a number of European member states and European cities with varying degrees of success. The Intelligent Energy Europe funded ICVUE project developed a decision support model (DSM) that related incentive to EV uptake and CO2 emission reduction based on local and regional conditions. This paper describes the methodology used in exploring the relationship between incentive and acceptance, the development of the DSM and the work done in partnership with the cities of London, Vienna, Stuttgart and Barcelona on evaluating EV uptake and CO2 reduction potential. The results show that benefit of an incentive needs to be viewed by how it interacts with the system into which it is deployed in addition to any measurement of its value in isolation. Furthermore, the results show an effectivity bonus (additional EVs / reduction in CO2) from bundling of incentives compared to considering them in isolation.