Assessment of optimal fuel and drive mix for automobile sector decarbonization in India: a scenario analysis of 2035

Abstract

The rapid growth of predominantly fossil fuels powered automobiles in India results in harmful greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), environmental challenges like air pollution and health hazards. Hence, India is adopting alternate low-emission fuels like compressed natural gas (CNG), biofuels, promoting zero-emission technologies like fully electric vehicles (FEVs), pursuing options like hybrid vehicles (HEVs), and hydrogen-powered vehicles (HPVs). These solutions must encompass reliability, cost-effectiveness, circularity, and mainly optimality. This study addresses above challenges, aligns with India’s upcoming nationally determined contribution (NCD 3.0) and decarbonization policy till 2035 and derives an optimal alternate fuels/drive mix, It adopts a time-series forecasting and machine learning (ML) for vehicle inventory projections, constructs a scientific model, includes six relevant cost and benefit factors, evaluates eleven scenarios using the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method, derives an optimal mix and verifies its robustness through sensitivity analysis. The optimal mix for 2035 indicates a reduction in the share of fossil fuels (50%) with healthy improvement in the adoption of FEVs (40%), BFVs (8.4%), CNGVs (0.6%), HEVs (0.5%), and HFVs (0.5%). This shift toward cleaner solutions will enable reduction of around Rs 3.6 trillion in fuel imports and 54% of GHG emissions compared to current levels, enabling mitigating environmental challenges. Unlike energy sector, India lags in studies of optimal fuel / drive mix for automobile sustainability. This study addresses above gap, providing critical insights to policymakers, industry, and academia for fine tuning automotive decarbonization policies, toward achieving net zero by 2070.