In December of 2022, the UK-based Centre for Sustainable Highway Freight (SRF) had its ninth-annual worldwide convention. Studying that, it doesn’t sound like a promising begin to an interesting article. However it truly is due to what it clearly exhibits, I promise.

What’s the provenance of the SRF? It was based a decade or so in the past as a multi-institute analysis group with funding from throughout Europe, and a mandate to convey insights from the world to the UK to assist clear up the sector. Heavy floor autos (HGVs) characterize about 6% of the UK’s CO2 (not CO2e) emissions. And naturally, HGVs are additionally a significant supply of air air pollution, so there are a number of values to fixing this.

The institutes concerned aren’t lightweights: the Cambridge College Engineering Division, the Logistics Analysis Centre of Heriot Watt College, and the Freight and Logistics analysis group on the College of Westminster. Cambridge is #3 on at the least one international college rating record. Heriot Watt is a Scottish institute based in 1821 that’s #5 in Scotland and thirty fourth within the UK, and a nonetheless respectable 281st globally. All three have intensive worldwide networks. There’s a sure tutorial rigor related to them, together with a whiff of pipe tobacco and tweed that wants an excellent cleansing. And the SRF has robust worldwide hyperlinks with associate analysis facilities in China, India, and South Africa.

What concerning the convention? Effectively, having attended lots of conferences professionally, and reviewed the proceedings numerous occasions, I’ve a perspective on what makes an excellent one. If it’s principally a commerce present, and there’s a sideline of displays, I have a tendency to think about {that a} unhealthy convention from a high quality of displays perspective. The commerce present is the purpose (and there’s nothing mistaken with that) and the displays are a facet present, sometimes advertising and marketing for companies which have cubicles there. I’ve offered at numerous the latter, so I’ve some expertise of them.

The choice is a convention the place the content material is the purpose and the distributors aren’t. The SRF convention is the latter. Extra first rate high quality output, little or no vendor fluff. One keynote was a bit fluffy, the Mahindra & Mahindra presentation, however in contrast Volvo’s and Siemens’ have been fairly sturdy for vendor displays.

It was a three-day effort with a full agenda with three tracks and a poster session, additionally indicative that it was critical about getting consultants collectively to be taught and problem different consultants. Single observe conferences are additionally indicative that it’s extra advertising and marketing than content material. And among the classes have been distinctly slim, for instance those on brake and tire put on, one thing additionally indicative of a convention the place deep consultants have been presenting to deep consultants and being challenged on their views.

And it actually was worldwide, albeit dominated by UK and European presenters. There have been African, Indian, Bangladesh, and Japanese presenters. China and North America weren’t represented so far as I might inform, which is considerably of a pity, however nonetheless the geographic protection was giant, and Europe does, in any case, have lots of developed international locations with lots of heavy floor autos.

So all in all, it’s a reputable, broad convention with strong establishments and worldwide consultants. Authorities, NGO, tutorial, logistics clients, and heavy floor automobile producers have been all represented.

So what does the agenda of this very credible convention inform us?

It was principally about battery and grid-tied electrification of street transport, the first wedge and the one I take into account more likely to be nearly the one mannequin in coming many years. The 400,000 electrical vans on the roads of China’s huge cities and which ship items regionally inform us the route right here. The plain benefits of overhead caternary grid-connections with battery-electric vans, in addition to the prevalence on many European freight routes at the moment, supplies a transparent glimpse into the longer term. And there’s little cause to imagine that what Baden-Württemberg determined about hybrid battery grid-tied trains — 3x cheaper to function than hydrogen and we’re going to go battery-electric — doesn’t apply much more strongly to HGVs.

Subsequent most coated gas was biofuels, which I take into account to be one thing that ultimately sport have to be reserved for truly laborious to decarbonize modes of transportation, particularly longer haul aviation and transport. I take into account it a bridge gas for HGVs at greatest, nevertheless it exhibits up in just a few displays and is the main target of a pair. One of many targeted displays was about harmonizing emissions, which is a helpful technical dialogue and one thing that’s wanted. The opposite was a poster that fairly addressed considerations about sustainability within the biofuel sector, one thing I take into account value addressing however not as essential as stalk cellulosic biofuels and decarbonization of agriculture will run in parallel to deal with nearly all of considerations. Mark Z. Jacobson and I’ve mentioned facets of this, and his concern is black carbon and its excessive GWP. That’s an affordable concern and must be addressed. Biofuels won’t ever be as clear as straight utilizing electrical energy, although they’re much cleaner than fossil fuels, so mitigating their downsides stays essential. However nonetheless, not a significant focus for HGVs on the convention in comparison with grid-tied and battery-electric pathways.

Just one presentation handled hydrogen, which is nice as that’s a lifeless finish for transportation besides as a complement in some biofuels’ processes. The presentation was from researchers on the Scottish establishment, Heriot Watt College, which is unsurprising given Scotland’s success with oil and gasoline within the North Sea and ongoing makes an attempt by the standard suspects like SGN to ram varied hydrogen for power schemes down society’s throat. The presentation was on the utterly new infrastructure that was required for hydrogen for HGVs and was asserted to be a price optimization research. Hopefully the viewers realized that the takeaway was that it required an absurd new set of infrastructure that was deeply costly and nobody was going to construct. It’s laborious to say because the presentation excluded figures and comparisons to electrification. Each time I do the maths (maybe a dozen assessments since 2014) there isn’t any economically viable pathway for hydrogen.

Quadrant chart of attractive vs practicality by writer

In different phrases, the convention agenda makes it clear that the people who find themselves spending their careers targeted on this look like aligned with my evaluation of the house. Battery vans with some grid-ties are going to dominate. Biofuels will assist bridge a bit. Hydrogen has no place. Curiously, as I have a look at my quadrant chart from final yr, I word that artificial fuels, which construct hydrocarbon fuels from the bottom molecules, don’t even present up on the agenda for the convention, which is acceptable. As I documented fastidiously in my case research of Carbon Engineering’s pretense that that was what the tip sport for his or her direct air seize Rube Goldberg system was, artificial fuels can be vastly increased price and better carbon than battery-electric or biofuels, and a lot dearer than fossil fuels that there was no bridging the hole.

As all the time, the physics tells us the economics. In case you are attempting to get to the economics through the advertising and marketing, you’ll find yourself throwing good cash after unhealthy.

Final word. After I began this evaluation, previous to digging into The Centre for Sustainable Highway Freight, I had no thought my contact Professor David Cebon of Cambridge was an government of the Centre. I’ve used his wonderful Sankey diagram of the variance between hydrogen vs warmth pumps for residential heating within the UK a number of occasions because it’s a wonderful illustration of the deep inefficiencies and therefore price of utilizing inexperienced hydrogen as an power retailer. Cebon is a founding member of the Hydrogen Science Coalition, together with Paul Martin, Tom Baxter, and different deep power consultants in North America and Europe. It was shaped to convey information concerning the physics and economics of hydrogen as a retailer of power to the dialogue, as principally it had been advertising and marketing led. I believe that many hydrogen advocates would take into account this a cause to dismiss the convention’s outcomes, however I don’t.

And so, the agenda of a substantive, credible worldwide convention on heavy floor autos makes it clear from that perspective that it’s batteries and electrical energy that can dominate. On the coal face of a convention that concerned governmental figures, teachers, logistics clients, and OEMs, the detailed technical conversations are virtually all about how battery-electric vans will work within the coming many years.

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