Energy efficiency of road freight hauliers—A Nordic comparison
Introduction
There is a wide variety of measures for decarbonising road freight transport. Road freight hauliers always work in inter-company cooperation with the shippers. Shippers have their own requirements and needs regarding the freight transport operations and their decisions enable or disable opportunities to decarbonise road freight operations. However, the hauliers also have possibilities to decarbonise their operations regardless of shippers decisions. Primarily, the hauliers have control over the loading of the lorry, technical specifications of the lorry, type of fuel used and practices of monitoring fuel consumption.
A decarbonisation model by Heriot-Watt University and Freight Transport Association presents 36 decarbonisation measures which may be applied by logistics companies (FTA, 2012). International Energy Agency presents 26 policy measures and analyses the complex outcomes of these measures (International Energy Agency (IEA), 2009). British Freight best practice programme's Fuel Ready Reckoner presents 28 decarbonisation measures for fleet management and analyses their interrelations as well as ease and cost of implementation (DfT, 2010). Léonardi et al. (2006) list 76 decarbonisation measures affecting various indicators of the decarbonisation framework. These examples highlight that road freight hauliers have many ways to change their operations towards more sustainable direction. However, information on the level of implementation of these measures is scarce.
Tacken et al. (2011) interviewed 10 large German LSPs about their measures and AECOM (2010) did a survey among British hauliers on their monitoring practices. Liimatainen et al. (2012) presented the results of a Finnish haulier survey exploring their fuel monitoring practices and level of implementation of energy efficiency measures. This research aims to add more countries to this list to enable international comparison of the energy efficiency practices of road freight hauliers. This is achieved by replicating the Finnish haulier survey (Liimatainen et al., 2012) in Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
Section snippets
Average load on laden trips
Increasing the average load on laden trips increases the fuel consumption on l/100 km basis, but decreases the mileage required to perform the same haulage (tkm) and thus improves the energy efficiency (tkm/kWh) and decreases the total CO2 emissions. Average load may be disaggregated further to maximum payload weight and vehicle utilisation rate. This disaggregation may be helpful as the largest lorries are not suitable for every operation, e.g. in urban areas, and hence the changes in the
Survey
Structured surveys are methods for collecting data from respondents through questionnaires or structured interviews and they have an important role in many disciplines, including business studies and supply chain management research. Structured surveys can be interviewer-administered or self-administered and performed through personal meeting, on telephone, by post or email and online. Posted questionnaires have been the dominant technique, but web-based techniques are increasingly used (Ghauri
Total energy efficiency index
The energy efficiency index of the respondents is on average 38.5 points (Table 5) with 25% of hauliers having less than 24 points and 25% having more than 51.5 points. The two best hauliers achieved 81 points out of the maximum 100 points. The average points vary somewhat between the countries, but the differences are not statistically significant at 95% confidence level. The larger means of Norway and Sweden compared to Denmark and Finland seem to indicate that the haulier size may have an
Conclusions
The literature shows that there is a wide variety of measures which the road freight hauliers can take to improve the energy efficiency of their operations. However, information on the level of implementation of these measures is rare in academic literature. In order to promote policy targets for decarbonising road freight, it is important to gain knowledge on the current energy efficiency practices of hauliers in various countries. This research aimed to provide such knowledge to enable
Acknowledgements
The authors express their gratitude to the Nordic Energy Research for their funding of the research.
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