Talk About Reducing Emissions – Power Torque

There is a a lot of the talk about reducing emissions around the trucking industry at the moment, and there probably will be for the next 10 years, or more.

When the drive towards a low carbon economy comes up, all of the discussions are about new trucks being brought in, which are zero emissions, like battery electric, hydrogen fuel cell and hydrogen combustion.

I think quite a few people are missing the point about how emissions could be radically reduced. One of the factors, which we always need to remember is that the average age of a truck in Australia is 14 years. In 2035, 50 per cent of all of the trucks on the road will be from before 2021. This means that there are a lot of trucks dating back from before there were any genuine emissions control regulations, and certainly before carbon became a factor.

In the period when some of our trucks date from, the only time you could get into trouble for emissions was if the truck made too much smoke pulling away from the traffic lights and the police saw you and pulled you up.

With an average age of 14 years in the truck park, that means there are a lot of trucks going around which have virtually no emission control. However, thinking about carbon emissions, probably the more important factor to think about is that they are also not very fuel efficient.

The way we calculate how much carbon dioxide equivalent is being pumped into the atmosphere by a particular vehicle is by measuring the amount of fuel it is using. The more fuel, the more carbon dioxide equivalent goes into the atmosphere. It’s a simple equation.

Now we also know that every time a new emissions related regulation came along as we made our merry way from Euro 1 through to Euro 5 and soon, to Euro 6, every time there was a major change in emissions, fuel efficiency also improved. And that is especially true of the change from Euro 4 through to Euro 6.

In Europe, they are already talking about Euro 7 which will be a very different emission control regulation, in that, instead of concentrating on particulate matter and nitrogen oxides, it will introduce strict limits on the amount of carbon dioxide equivalent a truck can produce as it goes about its daily business.

There is an argument that there is no need to bring in this regulation. Instead the trucking industry should be covered under the umbrella of any legislation to reduce carbon emissions that are introduced

There is some merit in this idea but one of the things that the climate experts constantly tell us is that we need to start reducing emissions now, because if we start strongly now it will be much easier to get towards those 50 per cent reductions and zero emissions goals set well into the future.

There is one idea which would help Australia’s trucking industry do its bit in reducing emissions and would also make the truck manufacturers extremely happy, would be if regulations were brought in to drive trucking operators in Australia, towards newer trucks.

I know that suggestions like this are going to create a great deal of resistance within the trucking industry as a whole, but as an industry we have an obligation to make some effort to meet these goals and if we are not involved in the development of these regulations, you can be sure that they will be badly targeted and hit some sectors of the industry a lot harder than others.

This is the kind of thing we need to avoid, trucking already suffers from the introduction of badly thought out legislation. We need to ensure that when we talk about reducing emissions, the drive to lower carbon emissions within the trucking industry is universal across the board and effective, but that the burden is shared about everyone who owns a truck, old or new.