Characterizing the Economic and Environmental Benefits of LNG Heavy-Duty Trucks: A Case Study in Shenzhen, China

Qian Zhao,Wenlin Wu,Mingwei Hu,Xiaoxiao Xu,Wenke Huang

doi:10.3390/su132413522

Qian Zhao, Wenlin Wu + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su132413522

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Abstract

Heavy-duty trucks (HDTs) in road freight are a primary contributor of PM2.5 and NOX emissions in many cities. Shenzhen, a megacity of China, has already made great efforts to promote the green transport transition, including via the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) HDTs program, which may be the largest alternative fuel vehicle promotion program in the world. In order to fully understand the actual efficiency of such program, the economic and environmental impacts of LNG HDTs were analyzed in this study. The results revealed that, while the capital cost of LNG HDTs is higher than that of diesel HDTs, the aggregated cost during the entire operation period of LNG HDTs is 10% to 17% lower than that of diesel HDTs. By replacing existing diesel HDTs mode (including China-I to China-V) with LNG HDTs (100%), environmental impact analysis showed that PM2.5 and NOX emissions could be reduced by 96.7% and 73.2% in the city level, respectively. Moreover, the environmental benefits of using purely LNG HDTs versus just China-V diesel HDTs were also compared, which indicated that LNG substitution is superior to China-V, with a reduction of 20.9% for PM2.5 and 35.4% for NOX, respectively. Overall, the effectiveness of the promotion of LNG HDTs is notable in Shenzhen, and these findings could provide references for other cities to promote LNG HDTs and beyond.

Highlights

Playing a critical role in the national economy, the transportation sector is presented with significant challenges, such as associated environmental issues [1]
The results show that liquefied natural gas (LNG) Heavy-duty trucks (HDTs) outperform diesel HDTs with respect to the cost savings
The results show that LNG HDTs outperform diesel HDTs with respect to the cost weakened to some extent

Summary

Introduction

Playing a critical role in the national economy, the transportation sector is presented with significant challenges, such as associated environmental issues [1]. Due to rapid economic development and urbanization, there has been a boom in road transportation in. In India [3], rapid economic growth and massive urbanization has significantly promoted transport emissions. Along with the large amount of energy consumption, traffic emissions are high. MOVES (Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator) is a traffic emission calculation model developed by United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, Washington, DC, USA). This model provides an accurate estimate of vehicle emissions at several scales, which has been developed over 20 years and widely adopted since [46,47]. Maintaining000 the status LNG quo China-V Promoting. X emissions of four scenarios (The error bars for scenarios variances under the normal distribution with 95% confidence interval)

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion