A Comparative Gap Analysis for Electromobility and Alternative Fuels

Electromobility and alternative fuels are considered as key solutions towards the reduction of emissions and energy savings in order to achieve more sustainable and environmentally friendly transportation systems. European countries are trying to achieve significant progress in promoting these new technologies in order to ensure better life and air quality for their residents. However, the number of electric vehicles is still low and not all European cities have made worth mentioning progress towards this direction. The objective of this research is to identify the gaps hindering the promotion of electromobility and alternative fuels in 9 European regions from 8 European countries: Italy, Slovenia, Greece, Finland, Norway, Latvia, Belgium and Romania. The analysis is focusing on three thematic areas: Business, Governance and Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialization (RIS3) and each area is divided in various aspects such as charging Infrastructure, e-Vehicle fleet, incentives, technology, campaigns, legislation, enforcement, education, research and Innovation. The analysis is based on estimating the progress achieved in each aspect using a scale from 1 to 10 (10 indicates the highest level of performance and level 1 the lowest). Results indicate that there are regions with significant progress in the field of electromobility and others that still should elaborate a lot to increase their performance in most of the analyzed aspects. The findings assessment will help policy makers to prioritize their effort on the areas that have the highest gap until the desired level in electromobility is achieved and identify other regions with similar electromobility issues.