Sustainable mobility and energy resources: A quantitative assessment of transport services with electrical vehicles

The mobility of people and goods represents an essential activity that influences sustainability owing to energy consumption. Generally, electrical mobility problems concern the selection of technology (e.g. electrical vehicles (EVs)), monitoring the ex-post effects of their implementation. However, an ex-ante quantitative assessment of transport services in relation to travel demand is necessary in decision-making processes. The objective of this study is to propose a framework that supports decision-making regarding the optimisation of transport services for people in an effort to minimise renewable energy resources. Transport system models (TSMs) are the core of the framework, adopted to design transport services operated with EVs. TSMs are examined in a practical scenario, represented by the touristic port “Porto delle Grazie”, located in the Città Metropolitana of Reggio Calabria, south of Italy. Clean energy is produced from maritime waves. Transport services are designed considering travel demand by means of TSMs. The novelties of this study are a framework to support decision-making processes aimed at optimising renewable energy consumption, while ensuring the satisfaction of mobility requirements, and an application in a practical scenario where energy is produced by the sea waves to facilitate green transport services for people mobility. The application represents a prototypical experiment aimed at validating the proposed framework. A discussion section presents the main potentialities and limitations of this work, which can be extended to wider geographical scales and over different time periods.