• Energy Research
• 2016-2025close
• 13. Climate action close
• Transport Research close
• Netherlands close

The future of road transportation systems faces fundamental changes concerning technological progress and business models. Automated and electric vehicles are coming into the market and evolving towards a service-based mobility system with promises to tackle energy and environmental issues in the mobility sector. Although recent studies have begun to explore the potential impact of shared and privately owned automated and electric vehicles (AEVs) mostly from an operational perspective, little is known about the life cycle impact of such future transport systems. To fill this gap, this paper aims to compare the life cycle environmental impacts of shared vs privately owned AEVs in a regional context. A life cycle assessment (LCA) approach is developed to appraise impact categories with a direct effect on human health, ecosystems, and resources availability. Given that automated vehicles are not yet being used massively, the LCA is applied to synthetic travel demand data to assess the characteristics of privately-owned AEVs and the results of an optimization model that determines the vehicle fleet and driving patterns of shared AEVs serving a regional case-study in the central region of Portugal. Two different vehicle seating capacities - one passenger (non-ridesharing) and four passengers (ridesharing) – are considered to evaluate shared mobility systems. Results show that shared mobility systems yield a potential reduction of up to 42% (with 4 passengers per vehicle) of the system's environmental impacts compared to privately owned automated vehicles. Human toxicity, mineral resource scarcity, and marine and freshwater ecotoxicity are the impact categories with a higher potential of reduction. ; Transport and Planning

The urban heat island effect is often associated with large metropolises. However, in the Netherlands even small cities will be affected by the phenomenon in the future (Hove et al., 2011), due to the dispersed or mosaic urbanisation patterns in particularly the southern part of the country: the province of North Brabant. This study analyses the average night time land surface temperature (LST) of 21 North-Brabant urban areas through 22 satellite images retrieved by Modis 11A1 during the 2006 heat wave and uses Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper to map albedo and normalized difference temperature index (NDVI) values. Albedo, NDVI and imperviousness are found to play the most relevant role in the increase of night-time LST. The surface cover cluster analysis of these three parameters reveals that the 12 “urban living environment” categories used in the region of North Brabant can actually be reduced to 7 categories, which simplifies the design guidelines to improve the surface thermal behaviour of the different neighbourhoods thus reducing the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect in existing medium size cities and future developments adjacent to those cities. Tema. Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, Vol 9, N° 1 (2016): Planning for livable and safe cities: Extreme weather events caused by climate change

Will automotive be the future of mobility or will the motorcar era come to an end in the 21st century? Today, auto-mobility is still growing, but in the future, this will depend on its ability to adapt to the needs of modern society. Disruptive technologies like electrification, automation, and connectivity can make automotive more sustainable by striving for the Six Zero goals: Zero Emission, Zero Energy, Zero Congestion, Zero Accident, Zero Empty, and Zero Cost. These tempting goals can lead not only to a more sustainable ecology, but also to a new economy with more efficient use of the time and money needed for mobility. In this future mobility framework, this article describes the practice-oriented research of the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences with its regional partners to achieve these goals.

The need for zero emission drive is a global necessity that can contribute to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. In this context, fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles are increasingly attracting interest by governments, companies and academia. While parked they can operate as power generation units, given the proper connection to the electricity grid via vehicle-to-grid integration (V2G), or even power appliances directly (Vehicle-to-Load, V2L). In this study, we analysed the use of a hydrogen fuel cell electric scooter in combined driving, V2G and V2L mode. V2G resulted in the most efficient mode of the three, while V2L led to higher degradation rates. The measured average cell voltage degradation rate was 209 μV/h for driving mode, 356 μV/h for V2G and 648 μV/h for V2L. The insights provided in this study are useful to develop new, optimized and specifically targeted energy management systems for power generation of hydrogen hybrid electric drive vehicles.

This paper reports the development and results of a model exploring the resilience of the Dutch electricity transmission infrastructure to extreme weather events. Climate change is anticipated to result in an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events over the coming decades. Situated in a low-lying coastal delta, the Netherlands may be particularly exposed to certain types of extreme weather(-induced) events. The degree to which the country’s electricity network may prove resilient in the face of these future events is an open question. The model focuses on two types of extreme events – floods and heat waves – and assesses two types of adaptation measures – substation flood protections and demand-side management. The model employs a network-based approach in assessing infrastructure resilience – explicitly representing the structure and properties of the Dutch transmission infrastructure – and extends previous work by accounting for key power system characteristics such as capacity constraints and cascading failures. From a practice perspective, the results offer a first indication of the vulnerability of the Dutch electricity transmission infrastructure in the context of climate change. These results suggest that the network displays some vulnerability to both floods and heat waves. Both types of adaptation measures tested are found to enhance resilience, though substation flood protection shows greater benefits. Whilst the model was specifically developed for the study of electricity networks, we anticipate that this method may also be applicable to other types of transport infrastructures. European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research, Vol 16 No 1 (2016)

Maritime sectors have always dealt with uncertainties and disruptions. The COVID pandemic confronted the cruise industry with profound, wide-ranging, and lasting challenges while disrupting normal operations. Although the cruise industry contributes to the implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), resumption and sustainable cruising requires the industry to adapt to the challenges presented. To this end, the paper suggests adaptive actions for the cruise sector to respond to the pandemic and links the actions to the UN SDGs to highlight their sustainable contributions. A system thinking approach is applied and a literature review is conducted to identify suitable adaptive actions. This paper shows the importance of UN SDGs 3, 4 and, in particular, 17 for sustainable cruising. The results of this paper provide support for informed decision-making to increase the cruise industry’s sustainability. This paper recommends that stakeholders: 1- identify drivers and barriers of sustainable cruising, 2- adapt to changes and embrace the UN SDGs, as they provide a platform for realizing sustainability, and 3- use educational programs to improve and transfer knowledge on sustainable cruising between academia and policymakers.

This study is the first to systematically and quantitatively explore the factors that determine the length of charging sessions at public charging stations for electric vehicles in urban areas, with particular emphasis placed on the combined parking- and charging-related determinants of connection times. We use a unique and large data set – containing information concerning 3.7 million charging sessions of 84,000 (i.e., 70% of) Dutch EV-users – in which both private users and taxi and car sharing vehicles are included; thus representing a large variation in charging duration behavior. Using multinomial logistic regression techniques, we identify key factors explaining heterogeneity in charging duration behavior across charging stations. We show how these explanatory variables can be used to predict EV-charging behavior in urban areas and we derive preliminary implications for policy-makers and planners who aim to optimize types and size of charging infrastructure.