Australian can do so much better road freight energy and emissions – just ask Ben Elton

The Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE) is an Australian government agency still  producing detailed and useful information for energy and climate policy. I recently looked at their  data for road freight in their 2022 Annual data report. There were a few surprises for me.

Light commercial vehicles (LCVs) generated 17.5 million tonnes of emissions, 22 per cent of all road  transport carbon emissions: that’s 44 per cent of road freight emissions.

On average, LCVs carried only 167 kilograms of freight per vehicle, using over 15 litres of fuel per 100  kilometres, about 50 percent higher than an average existing car. Their emissions per kilometre for  each tonne of freight carried are almost 20 times that of trucks.

They add to urban road congestion and parking problems. On average, they don’t travel long distances, just over 15,000 kilometres per  year on average: but some travel a lot more.

On one hand, this means targeting electrification of LCVs could dramatically cut freight transport  emissions. They are well suited to electric operation. They recover a lot of energy in stop-start traffic  and electric operation eliminates idling fuel waste. They often work from a base, where they could  be charged.

Surely we could also increase loads with better coordination, and use more efficient alternatives to  provide the ‘last kilometre’ freight services people need. Maybe smart lockable storage at railway stations or shopping centres could allow the rail system to deliver more efficiently.

Australia Post is rolling out lightweight electric tricycles. In Asia, electric small freight vehicles are being used. And do we need as much ‘stuff’ transported by LCVs?

BITRE’s published data only presents averages, but presumably their report is based on extensive data collection.

It would be very helpful if they could publish data that breaks down each type of transport into more detail (eg deciles (categories of 10 percent) by distance), so policy makers can identify the subset of vehicles within each transport category that are using the most energy and  generating most emissions: policies could target the big opportunities and problems.

To put this in context, BITRE estimates that in 2021-22, operation of cars produced 38.8 megatonnes  of emissions, compared with Light Commercial Vehicles 17.5, articulated trucks (semi-trailers) 12.9,  rigid (and ‘other) trucks 9.2 and buses 1.3 Mt of emissions. Total road transport emissions estimated  by BITRE were 79.8 Mt CO2e.

This compares with the Australian government estimate for all  transport (air, sea and water) of 91.6 Mt CO2e, which was lower than its trend estimate of 94.8 Mt,  presumably due to short-term impacts of Covid and high fuel prices.

Total Australian emissions were  465 MtCO2e. So road transport of which freight is about half, is a big issue – 20 percent of total  Australian emissions .

We need to get much smarter with energy and climate policy. The freight industry knows what the  most carbon intensive vehicles are, and which ones travel the furthest. Subsidies for fuel guzzling ‘work’ vehicles undermine average vehicle efficiency and a shift towards EVs and other alternatives.

But we’re not great at targeting this ‘low hanging fruit’. And we really need to reduce dependence on driving big, almost empty metal boxes.

Perhaps the transport situation was well summed up by Ben Elton in the introduction to his 1991  book Gridlock. He describes the observations of aliens observing humans from space:

“They knew that humanity was stupid….. but this was beyond reason. [They reported home and got  this response.] ‘You’re trying to tell me that they’re all going in the same direction, travelling to much the same destinations and yet they’re all deliberately impeding the progress of each other by  covering six square metres of space with a large, almost completely empty tin box? You’re drunk….. A  society sufficiently sophisticated to produce the internal combustion engine has not had the  sophistication to develop cheap and efficient public transport?’ ‘Yes boss’… “