Decarbonisation in the Transport Sector

Rippan Bhattacharjee, GHD - De-Risking Fleet Decarbonization

Rippan Bhattacharjee

Project Manager | GHD

The discussion will be presented by Rippan Bhattacharjee, who is a Rail & Transit Project Manager at GHD. He has over 7 years of experience working in various roles in a fleet environment and has led the development of GHD ZEVO.

Rippan has a keen focus on the low emission fleets that are being adopted by fleets across the world. He is passionate about zero emission technologies in the transportation industry and as an engineer, Rippan strives to create clean, reliable, and actionable data which can be used to confidently make decisions around fleet decarbonization. At GHD, Rippan has led the development of an integrated software solution for optimizing fleet decarbonization pathways called GHD ZEVO. 

ZEVO has been successfully utilized by clients in the US, Canada, and Australia to build robust and resilient fleet transition roadmaps.

Rippan has extensive experience working for a major transit agency where he a Project Manager for the $12M Smart Bus Program. This program was a large-scale change management exercise which utilized various transit technology to identify operational efficiencies, increase ridership, and optimize fleet operations. 
 

De-Risking Fleet Decarbonization

Australia consumes upwards of 890,000 barrels of petroleum every day which is equivalent to 384 million kgs of CO2 emissions. However, a transition to clean energy can be a disruptive, expensive, and risky process. Much of this uncertainty comes from an inability to compare the life-cycle requirements and benefits of Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEVs) compared to traditional vehicles. This leads to further uncertainty over vehicle performance, operating range, fleet size, drive-cycle, maintenance needs, and their complete lifecycle costs. These risks can jeopardize a company's ability to deliver sustainable outcomes for their communities. Despite the climate emergency, fleet owners do not get the comfort of a ˜do over"; they need to ensure that the transition is as smooth as possible the first time.

To increase confidence in the decarbonization process, GHD has developed a solution called ZEVO or Zero Emission Vehicle Optimization. Our tool unpacks the various factors associated with a ZEV fleet and provides a realistic and optimized roadmap for adoption. The model works for any fleet type or size by collecting, auditing, and processing data from the fleet (i.e., odometer, maintenance cost, fuel usage, etc.) and it employs a proprietary physics model that uses on-road factors such as elevation, weather, road congestion, stop events, and driver behavior to identify the make and model of ZEV appropriate for the fleet. Through this assessment, ZEVO generates various pathways, each with financial, environmental, energy, infrastructure, and operational analyses in a cleverly designed PowerBI platform. The outcome from ZEVO can empower fleets to simplify and clarify their decision-making process around decarbonization and help them to develop pertinent business cases, and consequently build an implementation roadmap.

Simply put, the tool removes risk and uncertainty from the entire fleet transition process. 

Eleanor Short, WSP - Decarbonising Transport - Appraising carbon impacts to make difficult decisions

Eleanor Short

Senior Principal Transport Planner | WSP

Dr Eleanor (Elly) Short is a Senior Principal in WSP's Planning and Mobility Team. She is passionate about decarbonising transport, covering the whole spectrum from reducing the need to travel, to modal shift and switching fuels. She led the development of the Zero Emission Bus Transition Plan for Transport Canberra, and has recently worked on projects for the Federal Government and Victorian Department of Transport on Electric Vehicle charging.

Co-Author(s):

James Logie | WSP

James has over 10 year's experience working as a climate change and sustainability professional in both Australia and overseas in Denmark and Sweden. Working within the Infrastructure Investment Decisions team at WSP, he is passionate about driving cost effective decarbonisation and climate resilience outcomes with a focus on transport, water, power and government infrastructure sectors.

He brings experience working in complex project environments with a practical approach to sustainability and decarbonisation considering technical and financial constraints. His areas of expertise are in greenhouse gas assessment, infrastructure sustainability, options assessment, whole of life cost analysis, life cycle assessment, and circular economy. James is an excellent communicator and facilitator, passionate about driving big sustainability outcomes on projects that are often well aligned with core project objectives. He is capable of understanding complex planning, design and procurement issues, and uses the sustainability lens to help frame opportunities to decision makers. Enjoys working in multi-disciplinary teams and consulting with all members of project to ensure outcomes can be achieved. 

Decarbonising Transport - Appraising carbon impacts to make difficult decisions

In the context of large and growing emissions from transport, decarbonisation to achieve net zero will require some very difficult choices. New approaches to prioritising, planning and delivering projects are needed, as well as shifts in individual's behaviours. 
Addressing climate change to achieve net zero needs to be at the front and centre in decision making on the development of transport policies, programmes and projects.

The greatest opportunity to influence carbon outcomes and improve climate resilience is in the early stages of strategy, optioneering and concept development. But - understanding the impacts of different approaches is complex.

To achieve the transition to a net zero transport sector in Australia, a comprehensive and consistent approach to carbon appraisal is essential and lessons can be learned from overseas.

This presentation will explore a comprehensive approach to appraise the carbon impacts of strategies and projects which can help drive transport decarbonisation. This approach considers whole-life carbon emissions, including user emissions, embodied carbon and additional impacts and opportunities such as revegetation of transport corridors.

It will discuss experience from the UK where there are rigorous requirements to measure and value carbon in strategic business cases. 

The presentation will build on the content from the recent face-to-face conference.

Eleanor Short, WSP - EV Ready: How to plan a well-designed electric vehicle charging network to support transport decarbonisation  

Eleanor Short

Senior Principal Transport Planner | WSP

Dr Eleanor (Elly) Short is a Senior Principal in WSP's Planning and Mobility Team. She is passionate about decarbonising transport, covering the whole spectrum from reducing the need to travel, to modal shift and switching fuels. She led the development of the Zero Emission Bus Transition Plan for Transport Canberra, and has recently worked on projects for the Federal Government and Victorian Department of Transport on Electric Vehicle charging.  

Author(s): 

Harriet Farminer | WSP

Harriet is a Senior Transport Planner who is passionate about planning movement networks and services which deliver great place and community outcomes. Harriet has a broad range of experience having worked across the private and public sector on a variety of strategic transport planning projects.

Daniel Quan | WSP

Daniel is an Associate Director from WSP UK, experience in both the public and private sector for a range of clients in the UK and Australia. He has recently developed WSPs EV:Ready tool which estimates EV uptake and charge point demand in the UK. This tool has been used on over 25 EV projects across the country to help public and private sector clients understand likely EV uptake at a neighbourhood level between now and 2050, and how to plan and accommodate that future growth.
Includes a range of electric vehicle strategies, cycle projects and plans, and travel behaviour change initiatives. Daniel has extensive experience in electric vehicles, having written strategies for Sutton, Northamptonshire, Norfolk and Hertfordshire and is currently delivering strategies for Suffolk and Cambridge. 

EV Ready: How to plan a well-designed electric vehicle charging network to support transport decarbonisation  

Australia's transition from internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs) is in the early stages, and rapidly gathering pace - with policies, funding, and infrastructure investment all increasing across the States and Territories.

This is generating many questions like:  What charging infrastructure is required? Where? Who will use it and when? How do we best design this? What can we learn from overseas? Who should fund this?

This presentation will explore the answers to these questions, drawing on a recent global review on the features of a well-designed EV charging network for the Federal Government and WSP's EV Ready approach. 

A well-designed EV charging network will be considered in four themes: network coverage and supply of chargers; standards, interoperability & information; user experience; and strategy and implementation. We will present lessons learned from international experience related to these features, along with the barriers which can be faced, and next steps for Australia. 

EV sales in the UK are 14.4% , compared to 1.9% in Australia, and lessons can be learnt in terms of the approach to planning infrastructure.

We will share the approach and insights from our "EV: Ready" tool which has been used across the UK to support transport agencies understanding where different types of EV charging will be required, and where the public sector should invest. This includes rapid chargers to support en-route charging and standard chargers to support residential on-street and destination charging. 

Based on discussions with charge point operators in the UK, by 2030 it is anticipated that approximately 50% of fast chargers and 10% of rapid chargers may still require some degree of public funding. If the public sector does not intervene to plug gaps in provision and ensure a reasonable level of coverage, then the uptake of EVs in some areas will be slowed. We will explore what the likely role of the public sector is both now and into the future to support and sustain EV growth.
 

Dave Keenan, Aimsun - Next Generation Environmental Traffic Management - Case Studies from the UK and Germany

Dave Keenan

Regional Head - Business Development  - Asia Pacific | Aimsun

Dave is Regional Head for Business Development at Aimsun.  He is a chartered Civil Engineer of 24 years experience with a focus in transportation network modelling, and particularly on the meaningful and pragmatic project delivery aspects as modelling can provide.

After 17 years in the engineering and planning consultancy industry delivering projects in the UK, Middle East, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, including on secondments to public sector bodies in a number of countries, Dave joined Aimsun in 2015 to lead in developing client and business positioning aspects across the Asia-Pacific region.  

He is a founder of and Immediate Past National Chair of the AITPM's Transport Modelling Network. In June he became the fifth person to be awarded with the Modelling World UK Conference's Masters of Modelling Lifetime Achievement Award, in recognition of his contribution to the transportation modelling discipline globally in both a professional and in a volunteer/institution sense.

Next Generation Environmental Traffic Management - Case Studies from the UK and Germany

The topic looks at new global paradigms and software implementation methods at the leading edge of our  professional challenge to better manage the carbon footprint of transportation impacts via tailpipe emissions, including for improvements to air quality via real-time plus immediate-future air dispersion prediction.

Technical methods are outlined and two case studies are presented as a means of demonstrating the potential outcome results of applying such technological approaches:

1.  From the award-winning NEVFMA (Network Emissions Vehicle Flow Management Adjustment) project - The UK's first fully operational, county-wide predictive model for both the local and strategic road network in Oxfordshire; a project led by Aimsun in association with delivery partners EarthSense, Yunex Traffic and Oxfordshire County Council (on behalf of Highways England). 

2. Wiesbaden in Germany - Hesse's state capital of Wiesbaden commissioned Siemens Mobility to implement its Digitalization of Traffic (DIGI-V) project, which is based from the city's Green City Plan Masterplan WI-Connect. Wiesbaden has successfully lowered traffic-related nitrogen oxide emissions with an extensive air pollution control package covering all areas of mobility. To achieve this reduction, extensive environmental and traffic data is recorded, analysed and processed in real time.

The models predict not only traffic but also emissions, with a real-time, traffic-linked pollution dispersion model. The simulation of predicted NO2 pollution levels from EarthSense's MappAir dispersion model integrated with Aimsun Live allows real time proactive and reactive traffic management to tackle emissions and congestion. The system recommends three scenarios with changes to signal timings, traffic restrictions or other network changes for traffic managers to choose from, giving the optimal mitigation strategy to reduce congestion and emissions. Project indications show a saving in peak-period emissions of up to 22%.