Costs and Benefits of Electric Vehicles and District Cooling Systems: A case study in Singapore
Abstract
Urban heat brings negative consequences for communities, their people and their assets. Different strategies and measures could be introduced to reduce urban heat and increase Outdoor Thermal Comfort (OTC). However, these strategies and measures, not only brings with diverse levels of benefits, but also result in differing costs. Typically, a Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) is used to assess the cost and benefits of policy interventions. Yet, there are situations in which it is difficult to measure the benefits of a heat-reducing measure in monetary terms, making a CBA difficult to implement. In such cases, a Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (CEA) could be applied as an alternative method. In this study, we implement a CEA to assess the effects of two urban heat mitigation strategies related to new technologies: a district cooling system on the one side and the electrification of the vehicle fleet on the other side. We perform our assessment in a study site located in the City Business District (CBD) area in Singapore. We evaluate the costs and the effects of the two technologies applied to the study area. Hereby, the main benefit we are interested in is OTC, but also in final energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. In this study, we use the Physiological Equivalent Temperatures (PET) as a proxy measure for OTC (i.e. the lower, the better). We compare different implementation scenarios for both technologies, with different degrees of the technologies’ applications (i.e. 33%, 66%, 100%). We also assess the Business-As-Usual (BAU) scenarios, i.e. the scenarios without any additional implementation of the new technologies. Our results suggest that, on the one hand, the implementation of 100% District Cooling Systems presents the highest net-benefits compared with the BAU scenario. In fact, this scenario presents the highest PET improvement (-1.10C) at rather low costs (- 10.78%) compared to the BAU. Furthermore, this scenario brings the highest additional positive effects on energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, a 100% electrification of buses only presents the highest net-benefits as it brings an improvement in PET (-0.710 C) at only a 0.6% increase of the costs compared with BAU. However, the 100% electrification of the vehicle fleet presents the highest PET reduction (i.e. -0.910C) as well as highest reductions in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions across all scenarios, yet at the highest additional costs (i.e. +11.48%) compared with the BAU. In addition to these results, policymakers might consider people’s level of acceptance and support for the implementation of specific urban heat mitigation measures. This aspect could be studied by means of Willingness-to-Pay elicitation. Overall, our study gives valuable insights into the costs and benefits of the implementation of new technologies for heat mitigation purposes in Singapore. Mehr anzeigen
Persistenter Link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000454933Publikationsstatus
publishedZeitschrift / Serie
Technical ReportBand
Verlag
ETH Singapore SEC, Cooling Singapore (CS)Organisationseinheit
03361 - Schubert, Renate (emeritus) / Schubert, Renate (emeritus)
02803 - Collegium Helveticum / Collegium Helveticum
ETH Bibliographie
yes
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