Ready to go? Technology Readiness and Life- cycle Emissions of Electric Road Systems

A discussion paper from the CollERS2 project

Authors: Fredrik Widegren, Hinrich Helms, Florian Hacker, Matts Andersson, Till Gnann, Marcus Eriksson, Patrick Plötz

Despite rising electric vehicle sales, road transport is still dominated by fossil fuels usage. Globally, transport is responsible for about one quarter of energy related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the largest share of the transport GHG emissions comes from road transport with about 72%. Fortunately, technologies enabling low carbon road transport are already becoming commercially available or are under development. These technologies include the direct use of electricity in battery electric and plug-in hybrid trucks (BET and PHET) with stationary or dynamic charging via so-called Electric Road Systems (ERS), Fuel Cell Electric Trucks (FCET), bio-fuels and synthetic renewable fuels. These options are in different stages of commercialisation and development for heavy duty vehicles (HDV). The role of each in a future sustainable road transport system is still under debate. The present discussion paper is the result of an international collaboration on ERS research, the CollERS2 project. It summarizes key results of the first workshop with Swedish and German participants held in November 2021. This paper thus has a focus on one of these low-carbon road transport technologies: Electric Road Systems. The main aspects discussed at the CollERS workshop have been the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of ERS in comparison with other technologies and Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of ERS. The former is key to understand the potential long-term contribution in GHG emission reduction and the latter is important to identify the remaining technical challenges and thus indicating when ERS could contribute .