California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology

The objective of this preliminary report is to explore the energy supply opportunities and implications of electrifying highways. An important assumption in this report is that the technology and general cost structure for generating and storing electricity does not change significantly in the future. In other words, we ignore the possible use of super conductive materials to store electricity during off-peak times, which, if feasible, would greatly reduce average electricity costs. A future report will examine the opportunities and implications of breakthroughs in superconductivity.

The report is organized as follows. First, the relationship between transportation and electricity demand patterns are investigated. These relationships are then explored for different regions of the country. With this background, we then identify the implications of electrifying highway transportation for the electricity industry, including an analysis of energy supply considerations.