Characterization of the HVAC consumption of electric buses on different climate scenarios

• HVAC consumption doesn’t vary for the virtuous IPCC SSP1-1.9 and SSP1-2.6 scenarios. • HVAC consumption strongly increases for the IPCC SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios. • HVAC consumption distribution concentrates on summer as the scenario gets worse. • HVAC daily consumption distribution get wider as the scenario gets worse. • Climate Change impact on HVAC depends on the AC/Heating consumption ratio. Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) are an important part of vehicle’s consumption and represent a limiting factor to electric vehicles range. In recent years, the number of electric buses in the public transport fleet is rapidly increasing, also due to the improvement of their range and efficiency, and to the availability of infrastructures for recharging. In this work we focus on the analysis of the HVAC energy consumption for the Rome bus fleet and its possible evolution during this century in the framework of different IPCC sixth assessment scenarios for climate change: SSP1-1.9, SSP1.2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5. Results of this interdisciplinary approach, joining climatological simulations and HVAC consumption modeling, show no significant change in the consumption totals and distributions for the two virtuous scenarios, SSP1-1.9, and SSP1-2.6. A large increase of Air Conditioning consumption associated to a strong reduction of Heating consumption is foreseen for the worst scenarios, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.0, with prevalence of the Air Conditioning contribution. For the intermediate scenario, SSP3-4.5, the increase of Air Conditioning consumption is in large part compensated by the decrease of Heating consumption. Though, energy demand is concentrated in the summer period, when peaks are observed, with a not negligible impact on the required number of buses. On average approximately 110 additional buses in the intermediate scenario and 330 additional buses in the worst-case scenario are needed to guarantee the present operational service.