New tool for measuring greenhouse gas emissions in transit
Illinois has committed to lowering its greenhouse gas emission footprint set by the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act.
In an effort to help the state reach its goal, Professor Sybil Derrible is developing a tool to help transit agencies in Illinois measure emissions.
“Transportation has been the leading greenhouse gas-generating sector after surpassing electricity generation in 2016, and it is responsible for 29% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Any serious efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must include the transportation sector,” said Derrible, director of the Complex and Sustainable Urban Networks (CSUN) Laboratory at UIC.
The project is supported by a new grant titled “ITAG (Illinois TrAnsit GHG): a User-Friendly Tool to Estimate and Compare Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Transit Operations in Illinois” from the Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT)/Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT).
For the state, the transportation sector includes transit vehicles, which many agencies want to transfer their fleet of buses from fossil fuel to electricity.
In order to secure funding for this change, the agencies need to estimate how much greenhouse gases they would save by switching and what would be the impact of switching to an electric bus versus a potential hydrogen bus.
“They need a calculator to find these estimates, and this project is to make that calculator,” Derrible said. “We want to do it in a very simple way, so that every agency, no matter how understaffed or under resourced they are, can use it. So we are building it in Excel.”
Derrible and his team plan to pre-populate it with all the agencies in Illinois and data on ridership, miles traveled, the number of buses, and more. They will also collect information on the carbon emissions of electric buses, or their electricity consumption based on the grid and come up with a greenhouse gas savings.
“The big difference is a diesel bus burns the fuel right there and we know emissions. However, with an electric bus we know the energy consumption of the bus but not the emissions, because it depends where the electricity comes from. We need to look at different kinds of buses, different types of energy, and how much energy they consume, and link that to the grid,” he said.
“I think going forward, we all know that sustainability is the future. This tool will provide practical solutions to help make data-driven decisions for switching to a cleaner fleet for public transit,” added Anchal Bansal, a PhD candidate working under the direction of Derrible.
In addition to the tool in Excel, the researchers have built a website that will ultimately host the tool, an instruction manual with some videos on how to use it, and any other information related to the project.
“The amazing part of this project is the impact on the public. It could benefit the state of Illinois by lowering the greenhouse gas emissions, and that’s just very, very exciting to be part of that,” said Derrible.