Emissions measures could choke small haulage firms
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Requiring operators to report their carbon emissions could rule smaller hauliers out of major contracts, the SMMT summit heard.
steve.hobsonfdrbi.co.uk GROWING PRESSURE from major customers on hauliers to report carbon emissions could rule smaller operators out of contention for such contracts as they will not have the resources to measure emissions, delegates at the SMMT's automotive summit heard last week.
Speaking at a low-carbon CV session at the SMMT's annual event. Road Haulage Association (RI IA) director of policy, Jack Semple. also warned that big operators saw carbon reporting as a way of gaining competitive advantage over smaller rivals.
Responding to calls for the government to set a standard methodology for measuring carbon emissions, Semple said: -Some large companies see a commercial benefit because they are better geared up than smaller companies But there is no appetite in haulage for government involvement in carbon reporting."
Semple said that fuel duty of 56p/litre meant CV carbon emissions were priced at /220 a tonne, more than 20-times the current price of emissions in the Eli Emis
sions Trading Scheme. "Fuel represents 35% of the cost of running a truck, so there is already a very strong incentive to optimise the use of fuel," he said. "Do we also want to hamstring the hire and reward sector with carbon reporting?"
A Long way to go
Under the Climate Change Act, the government will require the transport industry to develop a mechanism for reporting carbon emissions by 2012. but there are still significant hurdles to overcome, including how to allocate emissions to the goods carried rather than the vehicle mileage.
"The supermarkets are asking
transport companies to report carbon emissions from vehicle use.said Semple. -The customer knows what is on a lorry, but the operator doesn't. Do we need the exact MPG for each trip? How do we allocate emissions if the vehicle is multi-user?"
Freight Transport Association (FTA) chief economist Simon Chapman agreed that there was already "a real focus" on driving down costs (see box). Although the FTA has developed its Carbonfta system for measuring carbon emissions, Chapman acknowledged that it was difficult for hauliers to allocate an accurate carbon footprint to each customer.
Meanwhile. Martin Flach, product director at [woo and a member of the SMMT's heavy CV technical committee, launched the committee's HGV ultra-low-carbon (ULC) strategy. Produced with the RHA and FTA, the strategy calls for four measures to encourage CV operators to invest in low-carbon technology: such as government incentives to stimulate the purchase of ULC vehicles; a measure of -well-to-wheel" emissions; proven whole lifecycle benefits of green technology; and an assessment of policy options such as carbon taxes, carbon trading and roadu.ser charging.
"Car and CV buyers are different," Flach said. -The car is an emotional purchase, but for CV operators it must make economic sense — and right now the costs are too high and we need to look at government incentives [for ULC vehicles]."
He added that there was currently no agreed measure of well-to-wheel carbon emissions, as tailpipe CO2 emissions were the same for a truck running on conventional diesel and biodiesel, even though the carbon impact was significantly different. Flach also warned of the danger of government policies accidentally distorting markets, pointing out that reducing the size of the vehicle that people could drive on a car licence from 7.5 tonnes to 3.5 tonnes had led to a -plethora of vans" and only a quarter of the number of 7.5-tonners on the roads compared with 20 years ago.
The increasingly stringent requirements for NOx and particulate emissions under the Euro regulations had also stopped the reduction in fuel consumption that was being achieved before the Euro-1 standard was introduced in 1992. "It will be a fantastic achievement if we can move from Euro-5 to Euro-6 with no drop in fuel efficiency," Flach said. • (14.... FOR THE LATEST NEWS VISIT; roadtranspart.COM