New report: Recommendations for Charging Infrastructure in Stockholm County

Swedish partner, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, have published the new report “Recommendations for Charging Infrastructure in Stockholm County, Targeting Full Electrification of Passenger Cars by 2030”.

The City of Stockholm aims to enable electrification of road vehicles to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, particles and noise from city traffic. Operation of electric vehicles requires substantial investments in charging infrastructure and much is still unclear regarding where to best install it, who should invest and operate it, and how much infrastructure is needed to enable electrification of the vehicle fleet.

This report breaks down and compares internalized and externalized costs associated with the operation of battery-electric and internal combustion engine vehicles, to estimate the total socio-economic value of electrification of passenger cars. They compare incentives for private and public actors to invest in charging infrastructure for passenger cars and relate these to forecast demand for charging. By applying a network model capable of handling interaction effects to the geographic region of Stockholm County, they identify sets of static charging infrastructure that minimize cost, ensure equal access to charging, and are sufficient to deliver the necessary energy to a future fully electrified car fleet.

A spreadsheet containing all parameter assumptions, calculations, tables, and figures is included with the report as supplementary material, to enable what-if-analysis, adaptations to future real-world development, and replication of the study in other cities.

The most important conclusions are that cities should prioritize speed of transition rather than cost minimization to maximize cumulative return on investment, due to substantial cumulative cost savings from electrification, and that the current under-taxation of fossil greenhouse gas emissions greatly reduces profit margins for private investments contributing to vehicle electrification. We estimate that a total cumulative infrastructure investment of 13 billion SEK can lead to electrification of 90% of the traffic work by passenger cars in Stockholm County by 2030. This would reduce cumulative system costs by 100 billion SEK from 2020 to 2030, with a return on infrastructure investment of 750%. Approximately 50% of this value is from externalized CO2 emission costs.

Read it here.