Transportation Annual Technology Baseline Expands To Include New Technologies
Update Adds Cost and Performance Data for New Vehicle Classes and Aviation Pathways for Current and Future Markets
In its first-ever update, the Transportation Annual Technology Baseline (ATB) now offers its users expanded cost and performance data to inform transportation sector analysis nationwide.
The Transportation ATB, first released in 2020, was developed by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Renewable Energy Laboratory in partnership with Argonne National Laboratory and provides detailed cost and performance data, estimates, and assumptions for current and future vehicle and fuel technologies in the United States through 2050.
The goal of the Transportation ATB is to integrate data from various sources into an accessible format that provides a consistent set of key assumptions for transportation analysis. The work is supported by DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, including the Strategic Analysis Team, Bioenergy Technologies Office, Vehicle Technologies Office, and Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office.
"The introduction of the Transportation ATB in 2020 was an important step in providing trusted, consistent data for cross-sectoral analyses," said ATB Lead Laura Vimmerstedt. "Now with this update, the Transportation ATB broadens the scope of the analyses it can support—covering more diverse vehicle and fuel technologies and providing more detailed data for robust analyses."
The Transportation ATB provides consolidated and comprehensive data from cutting-edge sources such as Argonne National Laboratory's Autonomie powertrain simulation tool and Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies Model. The Transportation ATB offers a suite of free, publicly available resources to help users easily interact with the data and meet their analysis needs. This includes user guidance and methodologies available on the ATB website, a Tableau workbook with interactive charts and visualizations, and formatted data with database-friendly summaries.
What Is New in This Update
The Transportation ATB provides vehicle data in a series of interactive charts for either a single year or a trajectory out to 2050 for fuel economy, modeled vehicle price, levelized cost of driving, and emissions. These metrics are available for a variety of individual powertrains, as well as in comparison with other powertrains.
This update expands upon the available vehicle technologies to include additional classes of light-duty vehicles. The update also introduces data for select medium- and heavy-duty vehicles—including step van, box truck, and long-haul sleepers—and their associated powertrains. Another important data addition is current and future projections of fuel consumption, cost, and emissions in domestic, commercial aviation for passenger and freight transport in the United States. This includes data for both conventional and sustainable aviation fuel.
In addition to the vehicle data, the Transportation ATB provides fuels data, with this update providing price or cost, production, and emissions estimates for selected fuels in four new categories: on-road fuels, blendstocks, marine fuels, and the newly added aviation fuels.
Learn More at December 14 Webinar
More information about the Transportation Annual Technology Baseline update will be presented at a free webinar from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. MST (11 a.m.–12 p.m. EST) on Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023. Presenters will describe the updates in detail, share examples of how to use the data, and provide an opportunity for attendees to ask questions. Register for the webinar.
Read more about the Transportation ATB, and register for the Transportation ATB update webinar on Dec. 14.