Road Freight Electrification Guidance (RFEG)

The electrification of the road freight sector is challenging and requires a socio-technical revolution led by shippers, logistics service providers and carriers to truly succeed. Electric freight vehicles, from an operational and business perspective, make sense for most applications – provided that a comprehensive planning approach is used.

The Road Freight Electrification Guidance works towards this goal by helping fleet owners and freight buyers to better understand where and when electrification should be applied, based on solid research, a tested decision-making approach, and through real-life examples from around the world.

The Guidance will provide recommendations to logistics actors on five priority actions considering the current and short-term state of the EV market. Learn how to:

• Incorporate electric vehicles in sustainable logistics roadmaps considering the availability of suitable vehicles and third-party service providers.

• Plan and provide charging infrastructure for own or third-party fleets.

• Calculate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of freight activity based on data availability.

• Clarify lifecycle (cradle-to-grave) impacts of electric freight vehicles and operations, both climate change and wider sustainability issues.

• Incentivize third-party freight service providers to transition to electric vehicles.

Active participation in the project will support your electrification journey:

• Gain clarity on the challenges you and your organization will face as well as best practices to overcome them.

• Increase vertical (i.e., value chain partners) and horizontal (i.e., sector-wide) purpose alignment to stimulate road freight electrification.
  

• Showcase leadership and inspire the industry with your electrification experience.

The work program builds upon several SFC projects to present an integrated guidance for electrification. These include:

• Data Access and Exchange, which produced a data model as an enabler for exchange of emissions-calculation-related data between organizations in a logistics value chain.
  

• Procurement WG, which will renew the SFC Procurement Guidelines, a tool for embedding emissions performance in freight service contracts.
  

• SFBA Fleet Electrification Coalition, which addresses the immature vehicle and charging market through demand aggregation.

• ZEFI, which will demonstrate electric trucks in an industrial zone in China, supported by a coalition of shippers, carriers, automotive industry and government.

In addition, several external-led initiatives will supplement the work to be done in this project:

• A research team led by Denmark Technical University and supported by SFC will develop design guidelines for depot charging infrastructure.
  

• Project Compose 3.0 on understanding and overcoming barriers to horizontal collaboration in logistics led by University of Tilburg.
  

• TranSensus LCA project, a Horizon Europe CSA project on alignment of LCA methodology for alternative fuel vehicles.