US DoE's NREL Releases 2024 Transportation Annual Technology Baseline Upate, Offering Insight into Latest Vehicle and Fuel Technologies
Washington D.C., December 3, 2024 - The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), in partnership with Argonne National Laboratory, has released the 2024 Transportation Annual Technology Baseline (ATB) Update, providing detailed data, estimates, and assumptions for current and future vehicle and fuel technologies in the United States through 2050.
The Transportation ATB joins forces with the Electricity ATB to offer consistency across analysis projects and modeling, facilitating tracking and sourcing of input assumptions and reducing lead time in conducting scenario analysis. The Electricity ATB released its 10th annual update earlier this year.
According to Laura Vimmerstedt, Lead of the Transportation ATB project, "We want to ensure that transportation analysts have access to the most recent insights and credible data, keeping up with technological advancements."
The Transportation ATB offers various key features, including:
- Vehicle data for base year as well as a trajectory out to 2050 for fuel economy, modeled vehicle price, levelized cost of driving, and emissions.
- Fuel data, including cost, production characteristics, and emissions estimates for selected fuels pathways in four categories: on-road fuels, blendstocks, marine fuels, and aviation fuels.
- Assumptions used to calculate vehicle and fuel costs are also available, promoting transparency and consistency across analyses.
To facilitate users' use of the Transportation ATB data, a suite of free resources is now available on the ATB website, including:
- A user guide
- A Tableau workbook with interactive charts and visualizations
- Formatted data with database-friendly summaries
The team behind the Transportation ATB periodically releases updated cost and performance trajectories due to rapid advancements in transportation technology.
Key Changes and New Features:
- Comparison charts between this update's assumptions and previous ones.
- A new conservative trajectory that replaces the constant trajectory for most vehicle scenarios, featuring improved vehicle technology cost and performance based on Annual Energy Outlook data.
- Literature comparison pages showing historical and projected vehicle cost and fuel economy information for light-duty and medium- to heavy-duty vehicles.
- Additional biomass-to-biofuels pathways addressing those used in biofuels industry modeling in NREL's Bioenergy Scenario Model.
To learn more about the 2024 Transportation ATB Update, register for a free informational webinar hosted by the ATB team on Tuesday, December 3, 2024, at 9 a.m. MT, where presenters will provide an overview of the Transportation ATB and answer attendee questions.