SEES Fellows: Impacts of Land Use Patterns and Public Transit Availability on the Economic and Environmental Sustainability of Electric Vehicles

In this Award from the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows Program) Dr. Elizabeth Traut from Carnegie-Mellon University will investigate the impacts of land use patterns and public transit availability on the adoption, use and economic/environmental sustainability of plug-in and hybrid electric vehicles (xEVs). This award has support from: the Directorate for Engineering, the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences and the Office of Integrative and International Activities. The proposed work will investigate what scenarios of electric vehicles (xEVs) and charging infrastructure are most environmentally and economically sustainable in various regions, under both current and future electric grid mixes. Some of the factors that will be considered include: vehicle design (especially all-electric range), adoption (cost factors, subsidies), driving patterns (distance between charges, city vs. highway driving), charging opportunities (when, where, and how long vehicles are parked), and charging infrastructure, which are in turn affected by regional factors such as land use patterns and public transit availability. The research will compare scenarios developed for Chicago and Glasgow, Scotland. The aim of studies like that proposed in this work is to develop science- and engineering-based frameworks to guide policy decisions for regional systems of xEVs and charging infrastructure. Dr. Traut will be working with collaborators Prof. Chris Hendrickson of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University as well as Prof. Piyushimita Thakuriah, Halcrow Chair of Transport at the University of Glasgow. This project is supported under the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows) program, with the goal of helping to enable discoveries needed to inform actions that lead to environmental, energy and societal sustainability while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges. With SEES Fellows support, this project will enable a promising early career researcher to establish themselves in an independent research career related to sustainability.