Tackling the Energy Revolution One Sector at a Time

As a major contributor to global CO2 emissions, the transportation sector has immense potential to advance decarbonization. However, a zero-emissions global supply chain requires reimagining reliance on a heavy-duty trucking industry that emits 810,000 tons of CO2, or 6% of the US’s greenhouse gas emissions, and consumes 29 billion gallons of diesel annually in the US alone.

A new study presented at the 2024 American Society of Mechanical Engineers International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC-CIE) by MIT researchers quantifies the impact of  a zero-emission truck’s design range on its energy storage requirements and operational revenue. The multivariable model outlined in the paper allows fleet owners and operators to better understand the design choices that impact the economic feasibility of battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell heavy-duty trucks for commercial application, equipping stakeholders to make informed fleet transition decisions.

“The whole issue [of decarbonizing trucking] is like a very big, messy pie. One of the things we can do, from an academic standpoint, is quantify some of those pieces of pie with modeling, based on information and experience we’ve learned from industry stakeholders,” says ZhiYi Liang, PhD student on the renewable hydrogen team at the MIT K. Lisa Yang Global Engineering and Research Center (GEAR) and lead author of the study. Co-authored by Bryony DuPont, Visiting Scholar at GEAR, and Amos Winter, Germeshausen Professor in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering, the paper elucidates operational and socio-economic factors that need to be considered in efforts to decarbonize heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs).

Read more in this MIT News article.