IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2018 - 39

barriers associated with ducted systems. Heat pumps can
provide heating and cooling services from a single capital
investment and can be connected to water heating, clothes
drying, and other building energy needs. cooking, which
uses about as much energy as space cooling or water heating
in the commercial sector, also relies primarily on natural gas
burners. Highly efficient electric induction cooking is now
available and offers speed, control, and safety features not
available in gas burners. electric alternatives for heating
and cooking are used in many u.s. regions; however, the
adoption of efficient modern electric technologies is still
relatively nascent compared to many regions of the world.
the electrification potential for the industrial sector is
much more difficult to assess due to the diverse number of
end uses and industrial processes as well as the limited data
and modeling tools available. setting aside the technological and economic challenges with electrification in industry, direct industrial combustion for process heating offers
the greatest potential for emissions reductions in this sector.
examples of industrial electric technologies include electric
arc furnaces, infrared dryers, and heat pumps for process
heating and building heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning services. Figure 2 summarizes recent final energy consumption by fuel and end use in the residential, commercial,
and industrial sectors.

Determining the Technical
Potential of Electrification
using the identified electrification opportunities from the
historical energy use and emissions data, we develop a set of
exploratory scenarios under which electrification is rapidly
advanced. We start with a reference scenario, which follows
a business-as-usual trajectory of electrification and service
demand growth and is based on current and enacted policy
and law. it does not include, for example, the clean Power
Plan. We include a high-electrification scenario, which
could be interpreted as reflecting technical potentials for
electrification although, as we'll describe below, even in this
scenario electrification is not quite ubiquitous as we exclude
some subsectors and consider how stock turnover can slow
the pace of transport electrification. it is important to note
that the development of this near-complete electrification
scenario does not consider costs, consumer preferences, or
other potential barriers to electrification. this scenario also
does not capture potential major structural changes in the
economy or disruptive changes in behavior or technology
(e.g., autonomous vehicles). in other words, our scenarios do
not reflect economic or market potentials for electrification,
nor do they reflect predictions.
For transportation, we use a modified version of argonne
national laboratory's Vision model to develop electrification
scenarios of nonmilitary, on-road transport. Modifications
include adjusting certain parameters and the addition of
electric vehicle options for medium- and heavy-duty trucks;
see steinberg et al. 2017 in the "For Further reading" section
july/august 2018

for more details. Vision is a stock-rollover accounting
tool for the u.s. vehicle fleet. using this tool, we generate
electrification scenarios for light-duty vehicles and heavyduty vehicles. in our high-electrification scenario, sales of
conventional light-duty vehicles, using internal combustion engine drivetrains, are phased out completely by 2040.
instead, new passenger car and truck sales are a combination
of battery-electric, fuel cell, and, to a lesser extent, plug-in
hybrid electric vehicles. For light-duty trucks, we assume
greater sales shares for hydrogen-based fuel cell vehicles
to accommodate the heavier weight and larger loads. For
heavy-duty vehicles, we assume a phase-out of conventional
diesel and gasoline vehicle sales by 2050, at which point all
new purchases are battery-electric and fuel cell vehicles.
Battery-electric vehicles are used primarily for short-haul
applications, and we assume fuel-cell vehicles are needed
mostly for long-haul applications. Figure 3 summarizes the
distribution of fuels used to serve the projected vehicle miles
traveled across all transportation subsectors modeled for the
reference and high-electrification scenarios. only recently
have some analysts started considering viable electrified
applications in long-distance trucking, shipping, and even
air transport; future work is needed to assess these options
in greater detail.
our high-electrification scenario assumes 100% electrification in all end uses in residential and commercial buildings. the full electrification technical potential is justified in
this scenario as electric technologies exist to serve nearly all
buildings end uses. in this scenario, space and water heating
services are served predominantly by heat pumps and a limited
share of electric resistance heaters. similarly, induction cooktops replace traditional stovetops. this scenario design does not
consider potential deployment challenges, including the slow
turnover of building stock or retrofit schedules, the economic
rationale for using heat pumps in cold climates where they are
less efficient, consumer preference, and other technical challenges with electrification for certain end uses or locations.
For industry, where electrification potentials are more
challenging to assess, we simply assume all conventional
boilers are replaced with electric technologies by 2050. as
shown by table 1, we assume nearly all process heating end
uses rely 100% on various electric technologies by 2050 with
the exception of process heating for iron and steel, which
we assume is only 21% electrified by 2050. this measure
of electrification refers to the fraction of total iron and steel
energy use that is purchased electricity. the share of steel
produced in electric arc furnaces in the united states is
much higher than the share produced in the combustionintensive blast furnace/basic oxygen furnace process. this
share of steel produced via electric arc furnaces is anticipated to grow under the scenario assumptions, but steel
production routes are not explicitly modeled in the analysis.
these assumptions are speculative and used to develop our
high-electrification scenarios only. More detailed research
is needed to consider whether electric technologies could
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