Action group meets for HGV decarbonisation

A cross-industry action group has met to discuss the next steps on the decarbonisation of heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) across the UK and Europe.

The HGVzero23 action group will bring together founding members of the initial HGVzero cohort last year, including Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, Tesco, XPO Logistics and Stobart, alongside new members including Diageo, Yusen Logistics, Clugstons, Gregory Distribution, Green2 Delivery and other logistics firms looking to decarbonise their fleets.

Within the first six months of the new programme, HGVzero23 members will address practical challenges, develop solutions with support from key industry collaborators, and tackle the complex pinch points to progress successful low-carbon HGV rollouts.

The work will include assessing vehicle technology transition, such as fuel options, multimodal challenges and battery considerations; infrastructure deployment to support charging and hydrogen; and required stakeholder engagement, such as real estate and energy companies.

It will also include looking at the business case for decarbonisation, including the total cost of ownership, commercial model innovation, opportunities with OEM and hardware or software suppliers.

Ian Anderton, Projects & Supply Chain Senior Manager, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners said of the group: “As a founding member of HGVzero, we are excited to welcome new organisations to the group that will enable us to further accelerate our collective ambition to decarbonise fleet logistics.  We look forward to exploring some of the detailed challenges facing us as a sector, such as transition fuels and long-term asset projects.”

Dr Nicholas Head, Head of Sustainability, UK and Ireland for XPO Logistics, said: “Being part of this collaborative action group and working with other leading haulage and global shippers to accelerate decarbonisation of HGV transport has already provided immense value to us as an organisation. We are delighted to continue our partnership as a founding member of HGVzero to address critical challenges related to the transition, improve future HGV strategy and take collective action.”  

Leo Pickford, Head of Business Change, Yusen Logistics, said: “We are thrilled to join this challenge-focused action group to not only share our experiences and expertise on our net zero transition to date, but similarly learn from others addressing the same challenges as we are, with the aim of finding solutions that enable us, and the industry, to make practical progress in our collective decarbonisation journey.”

Garry Birmingham, Programme Director Decarbonisation Delivery, FirstGroup, said: ‘’We are looking forward to furthering our collaboration with other HGVzero23 members to support our fleet transition. We found the knowledge share information, innovation, and network that IG brings to the group very useful in supporting the work we have done at First Bus, sharing learnings to other like-minded committed Transport fleets to address help and reduce vehicle carbon emissions.”

Matt Pumfrey, CEO, Innovation Gateway, said: “Due to the success of our HGVzero group in 2022, we have several new major logistics players joining our founding members for the new HGVzero23 programme, to continue our work on addressing the practical challenges of HGV decarbonisation. By collaborating and bringing the broad stakeholder community together we have a greater opportunity to accelerate change with reduced risk and cost.”

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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