SCelecTRA is organized around 4 technical work packages and 1 coordinating work package.

WP 1 : Transport sector model specifications and overall architecture                            

SCelecTRA will use the transport sector model PET36, describing the transport sector in 36 European countries.This work package aims to the model PET36 to allow a good integration of WP2 and WP3 outputs.

From an existing version of the European energy sector model, new technical parameters will be implemented to get a better description of the European transport sector and its interactions with other energetic sectors. A work on different ways to test public policy actions will be led as a methodological input.

WP 2 : Environmental policy benchmarking                                                                             

Policy makers may promote low-carbon vehicles by demand-side measures such as fiscal ones. In Europe, despite a Commission proposal, these measures are not harmonised across Member States. Vehicle and fuel tax regimes as well as the aim pursued by these legislations differ greatly among countries. This wide variety of national environmental policies is often cited as a possible explanation of European car fleet composition, which differs among countries.

This work package has two aims:

1. analysing the impact of existing environmental regulations and fiscal legislations (car, fuel tax, subsidy, levy, scrappage scheme, city fee, tolls) on the size/composition of the vehicle stock in various European countries; this information will feed into the PET36 model
2. defining different prospective scenarios of policy measures aiming at inciting passengers to adopt low-carbon vehicles

By doing so, this work package addresses the question of the effectiveness of incentive measures such as fiscal legislations on the carbon performance of the new car fleet. It attempts to determine which variables are the most important drivers of vehicle carbon intensity in the EU. Is it for instance due to car technical characteristics, vehicle prices, fiscal legislations (such as vehicle taxes, fuel prices and taxes) or other country-specific socio-economic variables? A cross-country panel econometric analysis will allow the project to determine the efficiency of various incentive measures to lead people to adopt low-carbon vehicles. By using econometric tools, this Work package will quantify the influence of these variables (Task 2.1). Based on these results, it will then be possible to select different prospective scenarios of policy measures aiming at inciting passengers to adopt low-carbon vehicles (Task 2.2).

WP 3 : Environmental assessment: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and quantification of external costs

The environmental impacts induced by the spreading of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) and Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) in Europe until 2025 shall be assessed. To this end, these environmental impacts will be quantified by two different LCA approaches, analysing the impacts of individual vehicle types and of the overall car fleet via a classical (or so-called attributional) LCA and a consequential LCA, respectively. Environmental impacts will be assessed according to standard Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods for both approaches. For the consequential LCA, environmental impacts will also be expressed in terms of external costs in order to put these into perspective with the costs associated with a given policy (done in WP4).

From these learnings, the feasibility of developing methods to standardize environmental burden evaluations of electric vehicles will be evaluated at least in terms of GHG emissions and Cumulative Energy Demand.

WP 4 : Scenarios for the Electrification of Transport: Policy analysis                               

This last work package aims at providing a consistent analysis of the economic and environmental impacts that different policy scenarios related to electric vehicle penetration are assessed to have.

With help of an operational European energy model that assesses selected policy measures while integrating economic and environmental outputs of the first three WPs, scenarios will be analyzed to shed light on following four main questions:

1.  What is the economical potential of the investigated electric vehicle technologies pathways?
2. Which policy conditions are most favourable to allow their most successful penetration?
3. What will be the implications on the overall European energy sector?
4. To what extent will their integration change the impacts of the transport sector on the environment in terms of pollution?

WP 5 : Project Management and dissemination                                                                       

This coordinating work-package will :

1. Provide a secure management structure for the decisions to be taken;
2. Conduct the overall legal and administrative management;
3. Ensure an efficient dissemination of the project work and results to the scientific community, and the wider public
4. Achieve the knowledge management (including its protection), also when disseminating the project results beyond the consortium.