How road haulage is navigating the route to net zero

Professor David Cebon (pictured above, far right) runs the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight (SRF), an ecosystem of academics, industry and policymakers which launched in 2012.  The Centre researches a wide range of engineering, logistics and policy issues, from fundamental to applied, small to large scale and tactical to strategic.

“We’re looking for sustainable solutions to decarbonise road freight for the planet, but those solutions need to be economically viable, or they won’t fly - and they have to be socially and politically acceptable. And of course time is of the essence,” says Cebon.

Electrification of road freight is one current major issue the Centre is addressing on a number of fronts. It’s a complex problem requiring a multi-disciplinary approach, looking at logistics, engineering, policy and energy factors in tandem.

Urban vehicles are already transitioning to electric, so much so that Cebon says within the next 10 years we’ll “wonder why on earth we ever drove diesel trucks in cities”.

But long-haul freight is a much more difficult challenge, as Cebon explains:

“Suitable electric vehicles are available now for most applications, but the batteries are heavy and they need to charged within the logistics day so that they don’t add time and cost,” he says.

“That adds many challenges and means the major issues facing the industry are actually about energy supply, charging infrastructure and logistics: not about the vehicles or technology."

The Centre is currently leading the Joint Operators Logistics Trial (JOLT), which is a collaborative project designed to explore how transport operators can move quickly and cost-effectively to an electric vehicle norm for heavy road freight operations in the UK.

The programme is based on two guiding principles, firstly that by sharing data with their collaborators, partners will maximise their learning; and secondly, that by sharing capital assets with their collaborators, partners will minimise their costs.

The objective is to develop the knowledge and models needed to de-risk electric freight operations and inform policy and investment decisions. The participating fleet operators are sharing their learning experiences in a pre-competitive environment to develop a clear understanding of how electric lorries and charging infrastructure can be deployed most effectively to serve their business needs. 

The project is providing shared access to a fleet of electric vehicles, provided by Volvo Trucks, Scania and DAF Trucks, and mobile chargers, provided by partner Evyve. These are being used by logistics partners including John Lewis Partnership – one of the UK’s best-known retailers - to test a pre-agreed sequence of in-service electric vehicle trials. High resolution operational data is being collected during each trial period and analysed, anonymised, and shared with all partners as part of a managed collective learning process.

The SRF has also spun-up partner research organisations with the same structure (engineering + logistics + policy; academia + industry + government), working with top universities in India, China, South America and South Africa.  These research centres have the same mission as the SRF.  The five research groups exchange students and academics and share tools and methods, data and ideas, as well as running joint projects and international workshops.

“We have developed our own international ecosystem of research friends who can all work together on common problems and solutions: to help decarbonise road freight world-wide,” says Cebon.

So with all this in mind, how feasible is the goal of net – or near – zero emissions from road freight by 2050?

Cebon is optimistic.

“The industry is making real progress towards decarbonisation” he says. “With electric vehicle technology advancing so quickly, the industry has a basic platform that should be up to the job of cleaning up the emissions.

“But what we’ve found since our launch 12 years ago is that road freight can only be decarbonised by taking a systems view of the engineering, logistics, energy and infrastructure: modelling the way that they interact, as all sectors of the economy decarbonise simultaneously.  That capability is in our DNA at the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight – so we can make a useful contribution.

“I am hopeful that the international road freight industry will get near to zero emissions by 2050.”