NNA Planning: Collaborative Research: Electric Vehicles in the Arctic (EVITA) - Interactions with Cold Weather, Microgrids, People, and Policy

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。航行新北极(NNA)是NSF的十大想法之一。NNA项目解决了快速变化的北极地区汇聚的科学挑战。北极研究需要为国家、更大区域和全球的经济、安全和韧性提供信息。NNA增强了从地方到国际的新的研究伙伴关系，使下一代北极研究人员多样化，加强正式和非正式教育的努力，并在适当的情况下整合共同创造知识。该奖项通过支持具有明显潜力的规划活动来实现这一目标的一部分，以开发新的、前沿的研究想法和方法来解决NNA的目标。它整合了 自然环境、建筑环境和/或社会系统的方方面面， 解决了重要的社会挑战，并与当地和土著社区接触。电动汽车(EVS)是全球日益增长的交通方式，北极地区对EV的采用越来越感兴趣。然而，必须填补知识中的几个根本空白，以评估电动汽车可以在哪里、如何以及为谁提供广泛的好处，以及可能需要做出哪些改变才能实现这些好处。例如，关于电动汽车在北极寒冷温度下的表现以及电动汽车如何影响孤立的农村电力系统的数据很少。目前也不清楚电价和公共政策将如何影响电动汽车的采用和使用。该规划项目汇集了来自阿拉斯加三个社区的研究人员和社区成员，以确定感知到的采用障碍、促进采用的机制、感知的有用性以及不同潜在用户群体(即自给自足用户、青年、老年人等)对电动汽车的使用。它还审查了农村用户在特定使用情况下，如生计活动，传统汽车和电动汽车之间的潜在权衡。这一规划项目是未来电动汽车应用研究的基础，通过解决已确定的知识差距，为北极农村社区实现公正、公平和可持续的能源系统提供必要的数据和信息。该规划项目的重点是通过与三个具有代表性的偏远孤岛电网社区(科泽布、加莱纳和阿拉斯加的伯特利)合作开展融合工程和社会科学研究的规划活动，加强社区联系。这三个社区的初始社区会议发起了一场关于他们社区中电动汽车的愿景和关切的公开讨论。三个社区中每个社区的另外两次后续社区会议继续建立合作和想法。这些会议有助于分享知识，以指导为未来联合研究计划的面谈问题和离散选择实验的发展，就社区用于电动汽车决策的工具寻求设计反馈，并加强与社区的联系。在这些社区会议期间，研究集中在有限的车辆使用数据收集上。更多的研究和社区项目合作伙伴远程会议巩固了知识共享如何为研究设计提供信息，以解决寒冷天气影响、电网影响和政策方面的知识缺口。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) is one of NSF's 10 Big Ideas. NNA projects address convergence scientific challenges in the rapidly changing Arctic. The Arctic research is needed to inform the economy, security and resilience of the Nation, the larger region and the globe. NNA empowers new research partnerships from local to international scales, diversifies the next generation of Arctic researchers, enhances efforts in formal and informal education, and integrates the co-production of knowledge where appropriate. This award fulfills part of that aim by supporting planning activities with clear potential to develop novel, leading edge research ideas and approaches to address NNA goals. It integrates aspects of the natural environment, built environment, and/or social systems, and addresses important societal challenges and engages with local and Indigenous communities.Electric vehicles (EVs) are a growing mode of transportation across the globe, and the Arctic is seeing increased interest in EV adoption. However, several fundamental gaps in knowledge must be filled to evaluate where, how, and for whom EVs can provide widespread benefits, and what might need to change to realize these benefits. For example, little data exist on the performance of EVs in cold Arctic temperatures and how EVs affect isolated rural power systems. It is also not clear how electric rates and public policies will affect EV adoption and use. This planning project brings together researchers and community members from three Alaska communities to identify perceived barriers to adoption, mechanisms for facilitating adoption, perceived usefulness, and use of EVs among different potential user groups (i.e., subsistence users, youth, elders, etc.). It also examines potential trade-offs between conventional and electric vehicles for rural users across specific use cases, such as subsistence activities. This planning project serves as the foundation for future research on EV adoption by addressing the identified knowledge gaps that can provide data and information necessary to achieve just, equitable, and sustainable energy systems in rural Arctic communities.The focus of this planning project is on strengthening community connections by conducting planning activities for convergent engineering and social science research in partnership with three representative remote islanded grid communities (Kotzebue, Galena, and Bethel, Alaska). An initial community meeting in these three communities initiates an open discussion about visions and concerns for EVs in their community. Two more follow-up community meetings in each of the three communities continue to build collaborations and ideas. These meetings facilitate the sharing of knowledge to guide the development of interview questions and discrete choice experiments planned for future co-produced research, to seek design feedback around tools for the community to use in EV decision-making, and to strengthen connections with the communities. During these community meetings, research focuses on limited data collection on vehicle usage. Additional remote meetings of research and community project partners solidify how the knowledge sharing informs research design to address gaps in knowledge around cold weather impacts, grid impacts, and policy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.