"No Place Like Home: Charging Infrastructure and the Environmental Advantage of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles"
joint with Johannes Gessner, Wolfgang Habla and Benjamin Rubenacker
Abstract:
The environmental impact of many energy-saving technologies depends on user behavior. For Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs), consumer choices regarding how much to drive and which source of energy to use (fossil fuels vs. electricity) impact CO2 emissions. This paper leverages quasi-experimental variation in the availability of home charging stations to quantify the impact of this technology on energy use and CO2 emissions of 836 PHEV company cars. Fuel and charging expenditures for these cars are covered by the employer so that, to the employee, home charging changes only the non-monetary costs of charging the car.
We find that access to home charging increases electricity consumption by 298.88 (±25.9) kWh per quarter and decreases fuel consumption by 102.34 (±38.0) liters, reducing CO2 emissions by 39 %. Moreover, access to home charging increases the employee’s propensity to choose a Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) upon renewal of the lease. We use these estimates to compute (private) levelized abatement costs and payback times of home charging for a range of scenarios characterizing the diffusion of BEVs. With current tax-inclusive energy prices, home charging stations break even within six to eight years.