Abstract

This paper presents the results of a pathfinder project on re-usable buildings which was part funded by Climate- KIC, supported by the EIT, a body of the European Union. It places reusable buildings in the context of sustainability generally, and specifically within the general theme of circular economy transition. It includes a brief summary of the literature review undertaken, focussing on challenges and benefits to the business case for adoption of reusable buildings.

Abstract

The UK has been one of the most advanced countries in Europe for the demonstration of electric vehicles (EV) and the introduction of the supporting recharging infrastructure. Much of the UK’s EV recharging estate was created and is operated under public subsidy, in order to seed the marketplace for further EV and recharging equipment adoption. This paper addresses the fact that subsidies for the operation of this infrastructure are coming to an end, which is likely to affect EV drivers’ recharging behaviour. As the public funding ceases the infrastructure owners must find other ways to cover the on-going costs of operation and recover capital investments made, in order to provide a continuing and viable service to EV drivers. However, actual uptake of EVs and therefore demand for recharging has been lower than the arguably over optimistic predictions made in 2010 when the subsidies began. The difficulty of covering operating costs with inaccurate EV forecast figures is compounded by factors including asset life and ownership costs, recharging locations, vehicle and charging specifications, vehicle usage patterns and regional demographics. The introduction of fees for recharging at a level which EV drivers are willing to pay is unlikely to enable infrastructure owners to recoup their full costs using conventional business models. A Social and Environmental accounting model could be developed to help inform decision making for the public recharging business case. This paper gives an overview of the findings from the UK supplemented by experience from Republic of Ireland, and comments on the impact of inaccurate EV sales predictions and early changes in recharging behaviour resulting from reduction in subsidies. Document type: Article

Abstract

Within the FREVUE project 80 fully electric freight vehicles have been deployed. It showed that city logistics operations can be performed by electric freight vehicles, but that at the moment the high vehicle purchasing costs are still a barrier for large scale utilisation of electric freight vehicles for logistics operations. Only for small EFVs (lighter than 3.5 tons) a short term feasible business case is possible. For the larger vans and rigid trucks, a feasible business case is not yet possible from an operator’s perspective, often not even with subsidies. Copyright © 2018 Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan, Inc. All rights reserved