The End of Neutrality? Fuel Standards, Technology Neutrality, and Stimulating the EV Market

James B. Bushnell, Erich J. Muehlegger, David S. Rapson, and Julie Witcover

Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, 2024, vol. Volume 13, issue Number 1

Abstract: Widespread electrification of the transportation sector is a key component of most strategies for deep decarbonization of the U.S. economy. While the acceptance of EVs has grown dramatically over the last decade, much of this growth has been spurred by substantial support from public funds and other related policies. Major electrification on the time scales supported in many climate policy plans will require substantial investment spurred by policy. In this paper we discuss the policy options for expanding the EV market. Our particular focus is on the potential role that a Clean Fuel Standard (CFS) can play in supporting electrification. These standards, like Californias LCFS, are typically positioned as technology neutral, and the LCFS itself relies upon a dense set of calculations and assumptions to rate a wide variety of fuels based upon their life-cycle carbon intensity (CI). However, it is likely that for a CFS to support the kinds of investments on a magnitude likely necessary to reach electrification goals, it may have to be altered in such fundamental ways as to no longer really function as either technology-neutral or a purely fuels-based standard.

JEL-codes: F0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://eeep.iaee.org/the-end-of-neutrality-fuel-s ... ating-the-ev-market/ (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to IAEE members and subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aen:eeepjl:eeep13-1-bushnell

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy from International Association for Energy Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Danyil Tiutiunnik ().