Mechelen-Belgium: Measuring freight CO2 emissions

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

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 

Goals: 

Expected outputs:

• Development of a ‘device’ to measure CO2 emissions of logistics traffic
• Making a baseline measurement as a starting point that can be used for comparison
• Measurement and analysis of the envisaged transition
• A software tool, for example a dashboard, that shows the CO2 and its evolution 

Expected impacts: 

• Depending on the developed device: installation of a minimum of 4 measurement points or installation of a device on a representative number of logistics vehicles.
• Engagement of logistics service providers
• Engagement of shop owners
• Making the promise of our covenant concrete, ‘alive’ and tangible
• Creation of sense of urgency with the logistics sector
• Creation of more involvement of the logistics sector
• Actually lowering the zero-emissions following the procentual transition as defined in the covenant 

Published on 8 March, 2023.