Real-world contribution of electrification and replacement scenarios to the fleet emissions in West Midland boroughs, UK

This study reports the likely real-world effects of fleet replacement with electric vehicles (EVs) and higher efficiency EURO 6 vehicles on the exhaustive emissions of NO_x, PM, and CO₂ in the seven boroughs of the West Midlands (WM) region, UK. National fleet composition data, local EURO distributions, and traffic compositions were used to project vehicle fleet compositions for different roads in each borough. A large dataset of real-world emission factors including over 90,000 remote-sensing measurements, obtained from remote sensing campaigns in five UK cities, was used to parameterize the emission profiles of the studied scenarios. Results show that adoption of the fleet electrification approach would have the highest emission reduction potential on urban roads in WM boroughs. It would result in maximum reductions ranging from 35.0 to 37.9%, 44.3 to 48.3%, and 46.9 to 50.3% for NO_x, PM, and CO₂, respectively. In comparison, the EURO 6 replacement fleet scenario would lead to reductions ranging from 10.0 to 10.4%, 4.0 to 4.2%, and 6.0 to 6.4% for NO_x, PM, and CO₂, respectively. The studied mitigation scenarios have higher efficacies on motorways compared to rural and urban roads because of the differences in traffic fleet composition. The findings presented will help policymakers choose climate and air quality mitigation strategies.