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Are electric bus projections electrifying enough? IEA example

May 31st, 2018 · No Comments

Forecasting is tough. And, there is a perception problem, forecasts are taken all too often as some form of firm projection that can be taken to the bank rather than a look to the future within a set of assumptions.  Forecasting amid great change — technological or otherwise — is even tougher. And, we are amid a period of great (often very tough to predict, to forecast) change.

Major forecasting organizations (both public (such as EIA, IEA, IEEJA), non-profit, and private) have had a horrendous track record when it comes to clean-energy penetration since roughly the turn of the century. Writ large, in the forecasting world, one should see roughly a balance of over- and under-estimates over the years as analysts learn and seek to adapt their analytical approaches to real-world events. When it comes to clean energy systems (wind and solar), however, there are few and far between examples of ‘over estimates’ as to the pace of penetration and the falling prices — with the vast majority of forecasting efforts showing extremely pessimistic undershooting as to solar and wind system progress.

Electric transportation appears to be following the same trend. See, for example, Daniel Cohan on why the EIA electric vehicle forecasting is unduly pessimistic. The latest IEA report on electric vehicles seems to have its issues as well. Let us focus on an arena undergoing incredibly rapid change: large vehicles, in this case, electric buses.

Here is how Bloomberg summarized the IEA forecast on electric buses:

5. Buses are going electric too

There will be 1.5 million electric buses in use worldwide by 2030, up from 370,000 last year, according to the IEA.

Almost 100,000 electrified city buses were sold last year, 99 percent of them in China.

Look at those two sentences:
  • 370,000 electric buses operating in 2017
  • 100,000 added to fleets in 2017
  • 1.5 million to be in use by 2030
Okay, the IEA forecast essentially assumes that electric bus production / sales will be totally flat from 2017 through 2030 as 100,000/year would mean a total of 1.3M electric buses added to fleets from 2018 through 2030. If we combine that with the 0.37M of existing electric buses in fleets, this would would put the total at 1.67M with a margin of 0.17M for retirements (on systems that typically operate in range of 15+ years dependent on fleets).  Does anyone want to bet that IEA is right: that electric bus production, which has been going up faster than solar penetration the past 36 months or so, will suddenly stop growing?
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