Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Applied Energy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy The long haul towards decarbonising road freight – A global assessment to 2050 Eamonn Mulholland a,b,1, ⁎ , Jacob Teter b,1 , Pierpaolo Cazzola b , Zane McDonald c , Brian P. Ó Gallachóir a,d a Energy Policy and Modelling Group, MaREI Centre, Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork, Ireland b International Energy Agency, France c Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis, USA d School of Engineering, University College Cork, Ireland HIGHLIGHTS • Global historic road freight activity data is analysed and projected to 2050. • The IEA’s Mobility Model is used to calculate future energy and emissions. • Current INDCs relate to a 56% increase in road freight GHGs between 2015 and 2050. • The maximum potential reduction over the same time-frame was found to be 60%. • Energy efficiency, improvements in operation logistics, and alternative fuels contribute to this reduction. ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Road freight Low-carbon policies INDCs GHG emissions Energy demand ABSTRACT Road freight transportation is a key enabler of global economic activity while also a central consumer of fossil fuels, which presents a challenge in realising a low-carbon future. To identify feasible decarbonisation solutions, we first assess significant drivers of activity in the road freight sector. We then use these drivers to project road freight service demand, vehicle stock, mileage, sales, final energy demand, and well-to-wheel GHG emissions using the IEA’s Mobility Model (MoMo) under two scenarios – the first incorporating the policy ambition of the Nationally Determined Contributions pledged at COP21, and the second extending ambitions to emission re- ductions that are in line with limiting global temperature rise to 1.75 degrees. In the former scenario, road freight well-to-wheel GHG emissions increase by 56% between 2015 and 2050, while in the latter, sectoral emissions are reduced by 60% over the same period, reflecting our assessment of the threshold of emission reductions potential. This reduction is catalysed by policy efforts including fuel economy regulations, carbon taxes on transport fuels, differentiated distance-based pricing, widespread data-sharing and collaboration across the supply chain as enabled by digital technologies, and sustained investment in ultra-low and zero-carbon infrastructure and research development and deployment. 1. Introduction The road freight network acts as the arteries for global economic activity. As such, it is strongly linked to globalisation and economic development within nations – as a country’s economy develops, so does its level of infrastructure, freight logistics, and demand for goods, all of which tends towards an increase in freight demand. This trend has become most prominently apparent in developing countries in recent decades. For example, according to national statistics, road freight ac- tivity in India – measured in tonne-kilometres 2 (tkm) – increased by more than 9-fold over the period 1975–2015, [1,2] while road freight activity in China grew by more than 30-fold over this same period [3]. Road freight activity in developed regions has not been as extreme, but is still significant: in the United States, for example, road freight tonne- kilometres increased by 2.5-fold [4] over the same forty year period (see Fig. 1). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.01.058 Received 17 November 2017; Received in revised form 9 January 2018; Accepted 22 January 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. 1 These authors contributed equally to this work. E-mail address: eamonn.mulholland@umail.ucc.ie (E. Mulholland). 2 A common method of reporting freight activity is in tonne-kilometres, which is the product of the gross mass of the goods carried by the truck and the distance carried. Applied Energy 216 (2018) 678–693 0306-2619/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T