Does electric vehicle promotion in the public sector contribute to urban transport carbon emissions reduction?

China issued a major policy in 2009 to promote electric vehicle (EV) adoption in public sectors (i.e., public transit and public services), which are in the form of EV purchase subsidies and EV-related infrastructure investment. This is one of the world's largest scales of EV promotion in the public transport sector, instead of the private car sector. This policy is of great significance given that the acceptance of EVs by the public will eventually promote the replacement of existing gasoline vehicles. Based on the panel data of 80 prefecture-level cities in China, this study applies a multi-stage PSM-DID model to quantify the effects of this policy to reduce urban transport emissions. The empirical results show that the policy is effective in lowering urban transport emissions by an average of 16.3%. Annual per capita emissions from urban transport were also reduced by an average of 28.87 kg. The authors' DID models are also adapted to estimate the time-varying policy effects for heterogeneous cities. The mechanism of the policy's effect is also investigated. The policy is found to increase both the EV penetration in the public sector and the overall scale of urban passenger traffic, with countervailing effects on urban transport emissions. The overall reduced emission suggests that the benefits of higher emission efficiency brought by high EV adoption outweigh the negative effect of increasing the urban traffic scale. Their robustness checks also demonstrated the direct subsidy of EV purchases for the public sector, instead of private cars, seems more effective to reduce urban transport emissions. The authors' empirical results thus advocate the government's support of EV promotion in public sectors to reduce urban transport emissions, although the private EV purchase appears to receive more favors under existing policies.

• Record URL:
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2022.06.002
• Record URL:
  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X22001652
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/oclc/29485010
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Abstract reprinted with permission of Elsevier.
• Authors:
  • Zhang, Junjie
  • 0000-0001-8551-2416
  • Jia, Rongwen
  • Yang, Hangjun
  • Dong, Kangyin
  • 0000-0002-5776-1498
• Publication Date: 2022-9

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Appendices; Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 151-163
• Serial:
  • Transport Policy
  • Volume: 125
  • Issue Number: 0
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 0967-070X
  • Serial URL: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/issn/096707X

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Air quality; Attitudes; Electric vehicles; Exhaust gases; Promotion; Public transit; Subsidies; Urban transportation
• Geographic Terms: China
• Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; Public Transportation; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01851984
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jul 21 2022 11:30AM