The Effect of Policy Incentives on Electric Scooters Adoption and Carbon Emissions

Abstract

The Internal Combustion Engine Scooter (ICES) is a major contributor to carbon emissions In order to increase the attractiveness of electric scooter packages of incentives are provided However it is still unclear how effective different incentives are To evaluate the effectiveness of these policy incentives this study examines the impact of demand and carbon emissions of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Scooters (HFCSs) and Lithium Battery Scooters (LBSs) under different policies Forecasting models and a system dynamics approach are designed to construct a model for evaluating subsidy policy in Taiwan The scenarios included: no policy incentives a $20 000 NTD purchase subsidy a $11 000 NTD purchase subsidy and ICES restriction The results show that (1) The electric scooter adoption will outnumber gasoline ones in all scenarios by 2050; (2) The policy which has the most demand is the $20 000 NTD purchase subsidy program with 13 871 807 of HFCSs and LBSs; (3) In terms of power consumption by 2050 the highest demand for electricity is the $20 000 NTD purchase subsidy program 2 876 72 Gwh; (4) The scenario with the highest carbon emissions is no policy incentives (1 977 576 78 tons of CO2e) and those with the most carbon reduction is the $20 000 NTD purchase subsidy program (1 599 076 14 tons of CO2e); (5) All scenarios can reach the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 2% in 2020 the $20 000 NTD purchase subsidy program can reach the goal of 20% of carbon reduction by 2030 and other scenarios cannot reach the goal of 10% and 20% of carbon reduction By 2050 each scenario will not achieve the 50% carbon reduction target In order to achieve the carbon emission target this study tried to convert ICES to LBSs and calculated the amount of increase or decrease required for each type of scooters to compensate for the carbon emission gap Among the various types of scooters LBSs have the best performance in energy saving and carbon reduction Therefore LBSs should be promoted at this stage The results of this study can give insights on the effects of different policies on the market penetration of HFCSs and LBSs

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	Ching-Chih Chang (Supervisor)