Consortium Clean & Prosperous Washington (CaPWA) launched its first in-depth look at seven projects to decarbonise the state of Washington’s transportation systems.
Seven case studies cover a broad scope of transportation emissions including off-road, on-road, marine, and freight applications.
While broad in scope and scalable to match available funding, the specific decarbonization solutions examined consider only a subset of transportation decarbonization strategies. These strategies focus on switching from liquid fossil fuels to electricity, covering a range of investment needs and potential impacts.
Each technology has unique merits and returns different benefits and costs. These merits are influenced by proximity to population centers and are accompanied by different investment dynamics given the different use cases and technological maturity. To help contextualize these merits, the report considers four broad categories:
- Long-term cost savings, with additional benefits.
- Long-term net financial costs, but net benefits are greater than the net costs.
- Costs that are greater than benefits, but may play important market transformation role.
- Difficult to quantify net costs and benefits, but necessary to accelerate the market.
Shipping technologies
Of the seven projects that are analyzed in the report, three have to do with maritime, and they are the following:
#1 Ferry System Electrification
The transition of the Washington State Ferry fleet to primarily battery-electric propulsion. The scope of this case study includes the conversion of three existing ferries to electric-hybrid, new builds of eight hybrid-electric ferries, and terminal electrification projects at five ferry terminals to allow for charging of ferries during regular operation.
#2 Ocean-going Vessel Shore Power
Infrastructure investments at Terminal 18 in the Seattle Harbor, operated by the Northwest Seaport Alliance, that would allow for Ocean-Going Vessels to use electricity rather than auxiliary engines for ship power needs while docked.
#3 Cargo-handling Equipment
This case study considers infrastructure investments at Seattle and Tacoma Port operations covering several categories of emerging technologies for cargo-handling equipment. Adoption of electric and hybrid equipment leads to early retirement of older equipment and reduced use of diesel for moving goods at the ports.
EXPLORE MORE AT THE REPORT FOR WASHINGTON’S CLEAN TRANSPORTATION
