Comparative life cycle assessment of heavy-duty drivetrains: A Norwegian study case

Abstract

• A complete process based LCA of three heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) powertrains is conducted. • A novel approach to overcome the inaccessibility to industry-related data is presented. • Three different vehicle technologies are compared among them from the environmental perspective. • Influence of clean heavy road transport technologies on climate change is also studied. • The battery electric truck shows better environmental performances in all considered indicators. • Fuel production pathways significantly influence the environmental performances of clean HDVs. This study investigates the life cycle environmental impacts of three reference heavy-duty trucks (i.e. a conventional diesel truck, a battery electric truck, and a fuel cell electric truck) considering the type of energy used, the energy sources and their production pathways. The environmental impacts are studied from a life cycle perspective, encompassing the entire value chains while employing the well-to-wheel approach for the propelling energies. Using publicly available data, the adopted approach suppresses the barriers of lack of industry-related data and amplify the accuracy of heavy-road transport emissions quantification. Results exhibit that the full electric truck (BET) can cut up to 68% of GHG (i.e. about 0.621 kg CO2-eq per km) while the hydrogen fuel cell electric truck may induce a reduction of up to 48% of GHG (i.e. ~ 0.430 kg CO2-eq per km) emitted by a Euro VI truck of same category under same operating conditions.