Abstract

The Dutch national transport CO2 emissions are determined by summing individual cases: a particular vehicle, on a particular road and traffic situation. In this paper the different aspects and the relations among them, as used in emission predictions, are outlined. In particular the central role that the CO2 type-approval value (from the NEDC test) plays in the real-world CO2 emissions since 2000 is clarified. © The author(s) and/or their employer(s), 2012.

Abstract

The annual reporting procedures of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have now produced greenhouse gas (GHG) emission inventories from 40 so-called Annex I countries for 18 years. This article analyses a subset of these data: emissions from road transport. The article compares the reported data with the technical guidance on GHG emission inventories provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The analysis suggests that some countries use the IPCC's default emission factors, whereas other countries use country-specific values. In the case of diesel-fuelled road transport, the estimated emissions appear to be generally comparable between all countries for all years. For CO2 emissions from gasoline-fuelled road transport, the picture is less clear. The results suggest that the default emission factor for CO2 from motor gasoline as provided by the IPCC is about 3-5% too low. Countries that seem to apply this default value might therefore underestimate their emissions by the same percentage. The effect of this possible underestimate on trends is, however, very small. Despite the possible problem with the default emission factor, the quantification of the trend in emissions is only slightly influenced by this. © 2011 Earthscan.

Abstract

This paper analyses what post 2020 targets may be necessary for the European CO2 legislation for passenger cars in order to reach the overall sectoral goal of 60% reduction of transport's greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 relative to 1990, as defined in the European Commission's White Paper. The required target levels are found to depend strongly on the contribution that passenger cars need to make to reaching the overall target, on the assumed growth of passenger car mobility, and on the extent to which biofuels could be available for fuelling passenger cars. To what extent electric vehicles and other low emission vehicles such as plug-in hybrids and fuel cell electric vehicles are needed to meet the post-2020 targets depends on the target level and on the minimum CO2 emissions that can be reached in conventional vehicles. Almost all assessed scenarios, require significant amounts of low emission vehicles to be sold from 2030 or 2035 onwards. Electric and plug-in vehicles are in the early stage of market introduction now, but developments are fragile could end up in a 'valley of death'. Defining a sufficiently low passenger car CO2 target for 2025 may be an effective instrument to motivate manufacturers to continue their efforts in the marketing and further development of these vehicles. This is important for maintaining the momentum of the transition towards large-scale application of low CO2 emitting vehicles. Document type: Article

Abstract

In the near future large quantities of CO2 will be transported over a large distance from Carbon dioxide Capture plants to onshore and off-shore underground Storage (CCS) sites. The risk assessments for the existing CO2 pipelines show distances to harmful threshold concentrations from 1 to 7.2 km. Such large differences in safety distances are not acceptable. For the design, construction and operation of new high pressure CO2 pipelines through populated areas it will be necessary to have a validated risk assessment model. This paper describes the applied models for the outflow and dispersion and the causes of the uncertainties in the outflow and dispersion of CO2 after an accidental release from a high pressure pipeline. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Abstract

Within the departments Environmentally Sustainable Transport and Automotive of TNO (Netherlands organisation for applied scientific research) several projects investigating safety aspects of electric vehicles have been conducted, including one in cooperation with KEMA and RDW of the Netherlands. Most attention in these projects was given to cars that were converted to electric, starting from conventional vehicles. This choice was made because most of the electric vehicles present in the Netherlands are of the converted kind. Only recently larger numbers of OEM Electric Vehicles have become available. In the study practical safety guidelines for the companies involved in the conversion business have been established. In general it can be concluded that converted vehicles carry greater safety risks due to the way they are made (retrofit) and different, less stringent approval tests for individually modified vehicles. This study presents a strategy to -focusing on safety- optimally convert to electric. Electric, functional as well as crash safety were covered and recommendations were given for each.

Abstract

Particulate matter poses a significant threat to human health. To be able to develop effective mitigation strategies, the origin of particulate matter needs to be established. The regional air quality model LOTOS-EUROS, equipped with a newly developed labeling routine, was used to establish the origin of PM10 and PM2.5 in the Netherlands for 2007-2009 at the source sector level, distinguishing between national and foreign sources. The results suggest that 70-80% of modeled PM10 and 80-95% of PM2.5 in the Netherlands is of anthropogenic origin. About 1/3 of anthropogenic PM10 is of Dutch origin and 2/3 originates in foreign countries. Agriculture and transport are the Dutch sectors with the largest contribution to PM10 mass in the Netherlands, whereas the foreign contribution is more equally apportioned to road transport, other transport, industry, power generation and agriculture. For the PM2.5 fraction, a larger share is apportioned to foreign and anthropogenic origin than for PM10, but the same source sectors are dominant. The national contribution to PM levels is significantly higher in the densely populated Randstad area than for the country on average and areas close to the borders. In general, the Dutch contribution to the concentration of primary aerosol is larger than for secondary species. The sectoral origin varies per component and is location and time dependent. During peak episodes, natural sources are less important than under normal conditions, whereas especially road transport and agriculture become more important. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

Abstract

Recently, it has been suggested that the annoyance of residents at a given aircraft noise exposure level increases over the years. The objective of the present study was to verify the hypothesized trend and to identify its possible causes. To this end, the large database used to establish earlier exposure-response relationships on aircraft noise was updated with original data from several recent surveys, yielding a database with data from 34 separate airports. Multilevel grouped regression was used to determine the annoyance response per airport, after which meta-regression was used to investigate whether study characteristics could explain the heterogeneity in annoyance response between airports. A significant increase over the years was observed in annoyance at a given level of aircraft noise exposure. Furthermore, the type of annoyance scale, the type of contact, and the response percentage were found to be sources of heterogeneity. Of these, only the scale factor could statistically account for the trend, although other findings rule it out as a satisfactory explanation. No evidence was found for increased self-reported noise sensitivity. The results are of importance to the applicability of current exposure-annoyance relationships for aircraft noise and provide a basis for decisions on whether these need to be updated. © 2011 Acoustical Society of America.

Abstract

Developments with electric bicycles in the Netherlands are progressing rapidly. The number of electric bicycles sold is rises every year. Cycling is a very popular mode of transport in The Netherlands. In 2008 more than one million bicycles were sold. At the moment one out of ten bicycles sold is already an electric one. Electric bicycles are popular among the elderly and people with physical constraints. The government also wants to stimulate commuters to use the e-bicycle instead of the car. There are a few reasons for this: Less congestion, more environmental and health benefits. Research performed by TNO showed that commuters who use an electric bicycle might drive 1.5 times further than with a traditional bicycle, allowing a large group of potential new users to use cycling as mode for their commuting transport. The number of trips by bicycle has to potential to grow by 3 to 5% and the number of bicycle kilometres to grow by 4 to 12% even. The number of car trips might decrease with 1.6% and the number of car kilometres with a lower value due to the replacement of mainly shorter car trips. Pilot projects are set up now to introduce e-bicycles to commuters. A majority of the participants of the first two pilots held are positive about the e-bicycles as an alternative for the car in commuting traffic. An extensive large two year pilot will start in Eindhoven to stimulate commuters to use the e-bicycle instead of the car. TNO will investigate the mobility effects of the use of the e-bicycle from this pilot.

Abstract

Heavy metals constitute an important group of persistent toxic pollutants occurring in ambient air and other media. One of the suspected sources of these metals in the atmosphere is combustion of transport fuels in road vehicles. However estimates of the emissions of these metals from road vehicles as reported in national emission inventories show a very high variability in emission factors used. This paper provides high quality data on concentrations of heavy metals in fuels and derives default emission factors from these. The paper discusses these values against the emission estimates presently reported by the Parties to the LRTAP Convention. The measured concentrations of heavy metals in petrol and diesel fuel show a high variability between different samples taken at gas stations throughout Europe. Metal concentrations in road transport fuels vary over two orders of magnitude, but all remain in the ppb region (a few tenths of a ppb to a few hundred ppb for all metals). The frequency distributions of the measurements could be approximated by lognormal distributions. We could not detect a significant difference between samples from different countries. The fuel based emission factors as derived in this study are compared with those related to lubricant use as published by Winther and Slentø (2010). For most HMs studied here, this would lead to an two to fourfold increase of the tailpipe emissions as derived from the fuel concentrations. The emission factors, including 95 percent confidence intervals were derived from a statistical analysis of the survey data. The proposed emission factors were generally lower than previously published emission factors. National emissions of heavy metals from vehicle exhaust, estimated in this study therefore are in many cases considerably lower than those reported by the countries for this source.