Beyond emissions and economics: Rethinking the co-benefits of electric vehicles (EVs) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G)

Electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid are one option to achieve the transition to decarbonizing society. Despite perceived advantages of cost-savings and carbon reductions, such technologies have faced various barriers that has prevented wide-scale adoption. While much literature has carefully investigated the techno-economics dimensions to electric mobility, we ask: what are the full set of benefits that EVs and V2G offer? To provide an answer, the authors conducted 227 semi-structured interviews with transportation and electricity experts from over 200 institutions across the Nordic region. Results show that there is an extensive range of benefits for both EVs and V2G, with experts suggesting 29 and 25 categories of benefits for EVs and V2G, respectively. Though the experts covered the obvious benefits of economic savings, emissions, and renewable energy integration, several other novel benefits were identified. The second and third most common discussed EV benefit was noise reduction and better performance, which are typically not widely discussed. Similarly, we find that V2G benefits covered topics like vehicle-to-home and solar integration, as well as more novel benefits, like vehicle-to-telescope and emergency power backup. The article concludes with a discussion of future research and benefits in the context of energy research and analysis.