TY - JOUR
TI - The potential of natural gas as a bridging technology in low-emission road transportation in Germany
AU - Helmreich Hanna Wang
AU - Lochner Stefan
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2012
VL - 16
IS - 3
SP - 729
EP - 746
PT - Article
AB - Greenhouse gas emission reductions are at the centre of national and  international efforts to mitigate climate change. In road transportation,  many politically incentivised measures focus on increasing the energy  efficiency of established technologies, or promoting electric or hybrid  vehicles. The abatement potential of the former approach is limited, electric  mobility technologies are not yet market-ready. In a case study for Germany,  this paper focuses on natural gas powered vehicles as a bridging technology  in road transportation. Scenario analyses with a low level of aggregation  show that natural gas-based road transportation in Germany can accumulate up  to 464 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emission reductions until 2030  depending on the speed of the diffusion process. If similar policies were  adopted EU-wide, the emission reduction potential could reach a maximum of  about 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent. Efforts to promote natural gas as  a bridging technology may therefore contribute to significant emissions  reductions.