Abstract:

One of the major pillars of India’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions’ (INDC) is the transportation sector (INDC, 2015). The study finds ground in the fact that electrification of vehicles is introduced as the sole strategy in India’s INDC to tackle energy crisis, alarming quantities of tailpipe CO2 emission, of the transportation sector, and fulfill the formal commitment to COP-21’s target. There is a lack of studies on assessing long-term impacts of different sectors on shrinking global carbon budget. The present study focuses on assessing contribution of electric vehicles (EVs) with improving electricity grids’ efficiency (EGs) and minimizing ‘transmission and distribution’ (T&D) losses in reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and fulfilling emission targets for 2030 and 2050. Eleven different scenarios are articulated with estimated uncertainties for Mumbai Metropolitan Regions’ (MMRs’) passenger transportation using data extracted from MMR's Comprehensive Mobility Plan's transportation model. A novel methodology is developed to estimate local carbon budget targets from global targets between 2018 and 2050. The estimations indicate that carbon emissions in ‘business as usual’ scenario are 252%, 505%, and 55% above the targets for 2 °C, 1.5 °C, and Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC), respectively. Study also shows that introducing EVs in MMR without simultaneously improving EGs will generate more net CO2 emissions than BAU. EVs with EG and T&D improvements are not enough to meet the estimated targets. The developed methodology is suitable for estimating regional transportation sector’s carbon budget for data-scarce developing nations of the global south.