Moving beyond alternative fuel hype to decarbonize transportation

Noel Melton (), Jonn Axsen and Daniel Sperling
Additional contact information
Noel Melton: Navius Research Inc., Box 48300 Bentall
Jonn Axsen: School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University
Daniel Sperling: Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California

Nature Energy, 2016, vol. 1, issue 3, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract In the past three decades, government, industry and other stakeholders have repeatedly been swept up with the ‘fuel du jour’, claiming that a particular alternative fuel vehicle (AFV) technology can succeed in replacing conventional gasoline-powered vehicles. However, AFV technologies have experienced relatively little success, with fossil fuels still accounting for about 95% of global transport energy use. Here, using the US as a case study, we conduct a media analysis to show how society’s attention has skipped among AFV types between 1980 and 2013, including methanol, natural gas, plug-in electric, hybrid electric, hydrogen and biofuels. Although our results provide no indication as to whether hype ultimately has a net positive or negative impact on AFV innovation, we offer several recommendations that governments can follow to move past hype to support significant AFV adoption and displace fossil fuel use in the transportation sector.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy201613 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nat:natene:v:1:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1038_nenergy.2016.13

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nenergy/

DOI: 10.1038/nenergy.2016.13

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Energy is currently edited by Fouad Khan

More articles in Nature Energy from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().