Chancellor's Leadership Professor

Economic Policy Advisor & Sr. Research Economist

The Electric Ceiling

Electrification is a centerpiece of global decarbonization efforts. Yet there are reasons to be skeptical of the inevitability, or at least the optimal pace, of the transition. Consumer preferences can bolster or slow electrification goals; and electrification is likely to encounter physical and economic obstacles when it reaches some as-yet-unknown level.  The credibility and eventual success of decarbonization efforts is enhanced by foreseeing and ideally avoiding predictable but non-obvious costs of promising abatement pathways.  

Low Energy: Estimating Electric Vehicle Electricity Use​

Are EVs a good substitute for gasoline cars? One way to start to answer this question is to look at how people are driving their EVs, as measured by “electric vehicle miles traveled” (eVMT). Fiona Burlig, Jim Bushell, Catherine Wolfram and I provide the first at-scale estimate of EV home charging by matching 12 billion observations of hourly electricity usage with EV registration data. The average EV increases overall household load by 2.9 kilowatt-hours per day, less than half the amount assumed by state regulators. We then scale this up to account for away-from-home charging to estimate annual eVMT. Our results imply that plug-in hybrids travel 1,700 miles per year on electricity and battery electrics 6,700 miles per year, both far below miles traveled in gasoline cars.