Multi-criteria Approaches to Ancillary Effects: The Example of E-Mobility

Ambitious targets like the ones formulated in the Paris Agreement at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) cannot be achieved without a decarbonisation of the transportation sector. Like other policy interventions, policies focusing on this sector will be linked with primary and ancillary effects. In this study, we assess to what extent stakeholders will benefit or suffer from a switch to e-mobility by applying the ancillary benefit approach. Since the attitudes of stakeholders depend on many different factors and the list of factors differs between the stakeholders, an appropriate assessment of a decarbonisation of the transport sector requires the consideration of a broad range of factors including the weighting of options by actors. Using a multi-criteria approach we show that stakeholders, like car users and vehicle manufacturers, will show resistance if they are urged to go for e-mobility. Since the assessment of the characteristics of e-mobility is linked with high uncertainty, we conducted intensive sensitivity analyses. According to these analyses, it is difficult to cause a shift in the attitude of car users towards electric vehicles, since electric vehicles have a lot of disadvantages for the car users (including loss of comfort). According to our assessment, hybrid cars face less resistance since the technology is linked with more benefits/less negative effects for the stakeholders than e-mobility.