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Challenge

How to measure the CO2 emissions and its possible reduction for freight transport?  

Situation as-is

The city of Mechelen has signed a covenant with 33 logistics service providers and interest organisations to realise zero emission city logistics by 2030. In doing so, we have aligned ourselves with the European guidelines as defined in the 2011 white paper ‘Roadmap to a single European Transport Area’. This document urges us to: ‘……set the goal of achieving essentially CO2-free city logistics in major urban centres by 2030.’  

Mechelen is pursuing the following transition, taking into account the technical evolutions and availability in relation to zero-emission vehicles: 

• 2023: 20% of deliveries to be made with 0-emission vehicles 
• 2027: 50% of deliveries to be made with 0-emission vehicles 
• 2030: 100% of deliveries to be made with 0-emission vehicles 

The covenant was signed in September 2020. In the meantime, a lot of negotiating has took place between the city and logistics companies concerning the switch of fleet to 0-emission vehicles. Bpost, the largest courier company in Belgium, is already delivering the whole of Mechelen with electric vans or electric cargobikes and -trailers. DPD is experimenting with an electric van. Efforts are taking place, but for the moment there is no monitoring or analysis of the actual impact on CO2 emissions. A baseline also hasn’t been set.  

In the current situation there is no collection, follow-up nor analysis on data level of the goal of zero emission city logistics, so the gradual transition as defined here above isn’t being monitored.  

Therefore the city is looking for a ‘simple’ solution to be able to start with this monitoring, define a baseline and follow the evolution in CO2 emissions.  

NB: zero emission is defined as follows in the covenant:  
Zero-emission vehicles are emission-free at the exhaust (tank-to-wheel) when operating in a zero-emission zone. This means vehicles that do not emit any CO2 or air pollutants within a zero-emission zone. Practically translated, the following vehicles meet the definition:

• Electric cars (BEV – Battery Electric Vehicles);
• Plug-in hybrids (PHEV – Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles)
• Vehicles powered by fuel cells (FCEVs – Fuell Cell Electric Vehicles);

By preference, they are also powered by green energy.

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