The UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS-Davis) will receive a two-year, $2.77 million grant from the California Energy Commission to research the value, benefits and drawbacks of all types of alternative transportation fuels and fuel uses in California. The Energy Commission approved the grant at its June 13, 2012 meeting in Sacramento.

The grant will support teams of research leaders and graduate students in the Institute’s NextSTEPS consortium as they complete eight complex research tasks.

NextSTEPS is studying transitions to a sustainable transportation energy future, gaining unique insight from its multidisciplinary approach, and disseminating that knowledge to decision-makers in the private sector and governmental agencies so that they can make informed technology, investment and policy choices. It is the successor to the ITS-Davis research program named STEPS, for Sustainable Transportation Energy Pathways.

“This grant will allow us to conduct a wide assessment of the major alternative-fuel transitions in California, and enable us to inform the CEC in its investment decision-making,” said NextSTEPS Program Director Joan Ogden, a UC Davis professor of environmental science and policy. “We look forward to helping the CEC maximize the reduction of greenhouse gases in California.”

NextSTEPS brings together research from diverse academic disciplines, including vehicle engineering and design, systems analysis and operations, chemical and mechanical engineering, lifecycle cost and emissions analyses, market and consumer research, sociology and anthropology, economics and business strategy, and policy analysis.

Under this new contract, the UC Davis team will draw on those diverse disciplines to develop robust scenarios for the Energy Commission. For example, using data from its world-leading research on consumer response to alternative-fuel vehicles, researchers can inform market-growth expectations and strategies, and offer insight on the role of fueling infrastructure in driving consumer adoption of alternative vehicles. The project also will provide scenarios for biofuel investments and deployment, offer advice on possible policy tools, assess low-carbon fuel options for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, assess natural gas as a transportation fuel in California, and enhance agency staff technology awareness through training workshops.

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Photo: The research will be done by the Institute’s NextSTEPS consortium, directed by Joan Ogden, a UC Davis professor of environmental science and policy.

The UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies, which helped California create the nation’s first low carbon fuel standard in 2009, has joined five other leading research institutions in releasing a series of studies designed to establish a national standard.

In a bipartisan briefing in Washington, D.C., the researchers said that a national standard will ensure fuels of the future are cleaner, cheaper and “made in America.”

“A national low carbon fuel standard is a promising framework to help solve the transportation energy challenges that have eluded us for several decades,” said Daniel Sperling, director of the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies. “Technologically, such a standard is very doable. And it can help us address the complex choices with conventional oil, shale gas, oil sands, biofuels, and electric vehicles.”

Joining the scientists at the briefing were representatives of the automobile, electric utility, and biofuels industries.

A low carbon fuel standard, designed to reduce the amount of carbon in transportation fuels, would require all energy companies to meet a common target for carbon intensity but leave it up to the companies to decide how to reach that goal. So, for example, an oil company might choose to diversify into electric or hydrogen fuels. It might add more low-carbon biofuels to its mix of offerings. Or it might buy credits from companies that specialize in low-carbon fuels, or that can lower the carbon intensity of their fuels more efficiently.

The peer-reviewed reports will be published in an upcoming special issue of the Energy Policy Journal, from science and health publisher Elsevier.

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Photo: Dan Sperling and co-authors at July 19, 2012, briefing in Washington, D.C. (UC Davis)

The transition to sustainable forms of personal transport is complex, difficult and will require sustained cooperation among stakeholders both locally and internationally. The ITS-Davis World EV Cities and Ecosystems web portal has been developed to facilitate cooperation, inspiration and sharing of practical experiences among cities and regions around the world that are encouraging clean, low-carbon forms of transport.

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In the journal Access, ITS-Davis researcher Susan Handy writes:

“Pick a city, any city in the US, and then pick a house within that city. Open the door of its garage and you’re likely to find a bicycle. Chances are good that it is covered with dust or has a flat tire. If not, and if its owner has in fact used it any time recently, odds are the purpose was exercise or recreation.

Compare this to a garage, any garage, in Davis, California. Inside you’re likely to find several bicycles—more bicycles, perhaps, than people living in that house. In all probability, one or more of those bicycles is used at least weekly, not for exercise or recreation but for transportation—to get the rider to work, school, the store, a restaurant, or another destination in town.

Davis is one of the few places in the US where bicycling is a substantial mode of transportation. With the goal of helping other communities in their efforts to promote this low-cost, low-polluting, health-promoting mode, my students and I have undertaken a series of studies over the last five years to understand bicycling in Davis.”

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Photo: The Sacramento-Davis commute on I-80 (Sylvia Wright – UC Davis)

TheAtIanticCities.com writer Emily Badger reports:

“In 2006, Davis residents voted on a ballot measure to amend the zoning code for a particular parcel of land off Interstate 80 in the eastern part of town.

“ ‘But everyone knew it was this Target that was going to be opening at this specific site,’ says Kristin Lovejoy, a UC-Davis Ph.D. student who studied what happened next. ‘It was totally controversial, everyone was talking about it, and there was a lot of anti-Target discussion because Davis is this sort of progressive town, where it would be counter to our aesthetics and our culture. Are we going to allow this big box store in to our idealistic town where we all go to the farmer’s market?’

“In fact, people did. The measure passed by 51.5 percent of the vote, and the Target opened in October of 2009.

“Lovejoy and four other researchers at the university’s Institute of Transportation Studies took the opportunity to study how the new store would change residents’ shopping and travel patterns. And it turned out, for one thing, that people in Davis were already shopping at big-box stores – they were just driving long distances to get to them.”

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Photo: Priuses at the Davis Target store (CovertProfessor — Daviswiki.org)

In partnership with ITS-Davis, the new UC Davis Policy Institute for Energy, Environment and the Economy has completed its first Policy Forum Series. The topic: zero emission vehicles (ZEVs), which include plug-in electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

ZEVs offer the potential to reduce urban smog, achieve deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, reduce petroleum demand, and diversify our transportation energy supply. This policy forum drew from the latest research to explore some of the major challenges that remain to creating a commercial market for ZEVs, including technology, infrastructure and policy needs.

This Policy Forum Series, and those to follow, will bring together policy makers and practitioners, researchers, industry stakeholders and other experts for 1- to 2-hour sessions that include a research presentation followed by a robust discussion.

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Photo: Policy Institute forum (Dorian Toy – UC Davis)