Transport vehicles mostly bring to mind personal vehicles such cars and SUVs, and also perhaps 2 and 3 wheelers. But heavy vehicles, especially trucks, form a significant part of the commercial transport infrastructure and are significant contributors to the transport ecosystem’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Road freight transport alone is responsible for about 2.8 billion tons of CO2 emissions, almost 9% of total global CO2 emissions. A very large proportion of road freight transport emissions come from heavy commercial vehicles.
Practical decarbonization opportunities are available for trucks for the 2020-2030 period. Running trucks on natural gas instead of diesel could cut down CO2 emissions significantly. Optimizing the running operations and increasing efficiency of diesel trucks could increase mileage and reduce CO2 emissions per mile travelled. And the progress in electric trucks in some countries - USA, Europe, India - offers another promising decarbonization avenue for trucking.
Electrification has the potential to bring significant decarbonization to the trucking and heavy commercial vehicles sector. While challenges remain for electric trucks - the high cost of electric vehicles and the long durations needed for charging the high capacity batteries - there are solutions emerging to overcome these. Approaches such as battery swap instead of battery charging could help. In addition, leasing models for electric trucks could overcome the high capital costs attached to electric trucks by converting a capital expense into an operating expense.
For the 2020-2030 period, innovations for low carbon trucking will happen around battery electric & hydrogen fuel cell electric trucks, LNG trucks, efficient freight management and carbon capture for trucks.
Road freight transport alone is responsible for about 2.4 billion tons of CO2 emissions annually, almost 5% of total global CO2 emissions.
About 60% of road freight transport emissions come from heavy commercial vehicles dominated by trucks and buses, presenting clear focus sectors for decarbonization efforts.
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