Truck industry hits potholes on road to net zero

Daily Telegraph

By Tim Williams

Australia must get the wheels in motion fast to establish a renewable diesel industry, as experts warn of the scale of the challenge to decarbonise the trucking sector.

Trucking Industry Council chief technical officer Mark Hammond told this week's NSW Bioeconomy Summit that given the tight profit margin trucking runs on, operators would only adopt alternative vehicle types if they were economically viable. It did not look like that would happen by 2030, and with “line-haul and remote area” trucking, 2040.

“Last year we sold almost 44,500 trucks in (Australia) - 27 of those were battery/electric,” he told the summit, hosted by Bioenergy Australia

“Trucks sold today in 2023 will potentially still be on the road in 2053. We are going to have to significantly reduce the fleet age, or we need to find an alternative fuel to run that existing fleet on.”

Other issues included Australia - unlike Europe - lacking a government-mandated emissions reduction target for the transport sector, as well as inadequate vehicle design rules on width, length and axle mass that didn't work for “low and zero emission” vehicles.

Mr. Hammond estimated by 2030, 98 per cent of trucks in Australia would still need diesel and a 5 per cent reduction in overall emissions was realistic, well short of Europe’s mandated 12 per cent. If freight was moved more productively, with fewer empty trucks on the road, 7 per cent could be reached. Only a switch to renewable diesel would get Australia to the 12 per cent mark.

Building giant Lendlease runs nearly all of its UK operations on 100 per cent renewable diesel. Its national sustainability manager in Australia, Abigail Heywood, said the lack of a domestic industry in Australia meant having to import the fuel - crucial to the transition phase to electric machinery - at a cost premium.