VOL 11 ISSUE 2 2010
Analysing Global Energy Trends in Road Freight Transport By Maja I. Piecyk and Alan C. McKinnon Introduction This paper examines the amount of energy consumed in the movement of freight by road. It is estimated that in 2000 trucks used a total of 19.25 exajoules (EJ) of energy worldwide, a quarter of the total energy consumed by the transport sector in that year (WBCSD, 2004). The majority of freight movements by road is contained within national borders. Available data for 25 EU member states (excluding Greece and Malta) indicates that an average of 30% of road tonne-kms crossed international frontiers in 2005 (Eurostat, 2007). Road’s share of transcontinental freight movement is much lower. Of the three main transcontinental trade routes (Asia-North America, North America-Europe and AsiaEurope) only that between South East Asia and Europe offers the potential for surface transport links. Very little freight traffic currently moves on this route by road. It was estimated that in 2005 less than 5% of full load containers moving between China and Europe moved by surface modes (Farahmand-Razavi, 2008). As limited data is available on the cross-border movement of freight by road, most of the statistics presented and discussed in this paper relate to domestic
freight movement within individual countries.
average value density and handling factor, is crude.
Modelling the link between demand for road freight transport and its energy requirements
A simplified version of this model can be applied across parts of the developed world linking GDP, tonne-kms (road and rail), vehicle -kms (road) and fuel consumption (road). This permits an analysis of the key drivers of changes in energy use: economic growth, freight transport intensity (ratio of tonne-kms to GDP), average payload weight (ratio of tonne-kms to vehicle-kms) and fuel efficiency (ratio of fuel consumption to vehicle-kms). The framework will be used to structure the content of this paper but, given data limitations, it will not be possible to quantify it. There is a serious lack of statistics on surface freight transport systems around the world.
The relationship between GDP and the energy consumed by freight transport can be decomposed into a series of aggregate values and ratios (Figure 1). This approach has been adopted in previous research projects in Europe to determine the links between economic growth and freight traffic levels (e.g. REDEFINE, SULOGTRA, TrilogEurope). Unfortunately, only a few countries have sufficient data to calibrate this model and even in these countries the estimation of key ratios, such as the Value of goods produced / consumed
Value density Weight of goods produced / consumed
aggregates Modal split
Weight of goods transported by road
key ratios determinants
Supply chain structure Driving performance
Road tonne-kms Freight density
Vehicle design
Energy intensity
Vehicle carrying capacity by weight / volume
Propulsion system
Average vehicle loading
Vehicle maintenance Fuel type
Total vehicle-kms Vehicle fuel efficiency
Emission standard
Distribution of vehicle-kms by vehicle size, weight and type
Tyres / transmission
Fuel consumption
Transport infrastructure
Figure 1: Analytical framework
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