Lifecycle climate impact and primary energy use of electric and biofuel cargo trucks

Abstract

AbstractHeavy trucks contribute significantly to climate change, and in 2020 were responsible for 7% of total Swedish GHG emissions and 5% of total global CO2emissions. Here we study the full lifecycle of cargo trucks powered by different energy pathways, comparing their biomass feedstock use, primary energy use, net biogenic and fossil CO2emission and cumulative radiative forcing. We analyse battery electric trucks with bioelectricity from stand‐alone or combined heat and power (CHP) plants, and pathways where bioelectricity is integrated with wind and solar electricity. We analyse trucks operated on fossil diesel fuel and on dimethyl ether (DME). All energy pathways are analysed with and without carbon capture and storage (CCS). Bioelectricity and DME are produced from forest harvest residues. Forest biomass is a limited resource, so in a scenario analysis we allocate a fixed amount of biomass to power Swedish truck transport. Battery lifespan and chemistry, the technology level of energy supply, and the biomass source and transport distance are all varied to understand how sensitive the results are to these parameters. We find that pathways using electricity to power battery electric trucks have much lower climate impacts and primary energy use, compared to diesel‐ and DME‐based pathways. The pathways using bioelectricity with CCS result in negative emissions leading to global cooling of the earth. The pathways using diesel and DME have significant and very similar climate impact, even with CCS. The robust results show that truck electrification and increased renewable electricity production is a much better strategy to reduce the climate impact of cargo transport than the adoption of DME trucks, and much more primary energy efficient. This climate impact analysis includes all fossil and net biogenic CO2emissions as well as the timing of these emissions. Considering only fossil emissions is incomplete and could be misleading.