The Environmental Benefits from Transportation Electrification: Urban Buses

Stephen Holland, Erin Mansur, Nicholas Muller and Andrew Yates

No 27285, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We determine the environmental benefit of using electric buses rather than diesel or CNG for urban transit. For diesel and CNG we calculate air pollution damages by combining emission rates with damage valuations from the AP3 integrated assessment model and the social cost of carbon. For electric buses we calculate air pollution damages by combining the damage valuations with estimates of the marginal increase in emissions from electricity usage. The environmental benefit is positive on average across all counties in the contiguous U.S. when comparing electric to either diesel or CNG. The environmental benefit of operating an electric bus fleet (rather than diesel) is about $65 million per year in Los Angeles and above $10 million per year in six other MSAs. Including the environmental benefit, we calculate the net present value (NPV) of bus investment. Relative to diesel, the NPV benefit of an electric bus is positive in about two thirds of urban counties. Relative to CNG, the NPV benefit is negative in all counties.

JEL-codes: D62 H23 Q53 R40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-reg, nep-res, nep-tre and nep-ure
Note: EEE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27285.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27285

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27285

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().