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Greenhouse gas issues in the North American trucking industry

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Abstract

In this paper, we examine some the issues associated with reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the North American trucking industry. We review some basic descriptive statistics to apprehend the basic conditions in the three countries of North America and describe the North American trucking industry and the changes in its GHG performance. We also present some of the policies that have been either implemented or are being considered to reduce trucking GHG emissions. We then discuss some of the issues involved in choosing instruments to reduce trucking emissions. Specifically, we discuss the following instruments: incentives and standard to improve truck fuel efficiency, a tax on CO2, and tradable permits systems.

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Notes

  1. See Table 2 for the definition for medium and heavy trucks.

  2. It is important to underline that even in Canada and in the USA, there are serious data gaps concerning trucking activities (see, for example, Nix 2003; Barla et al. 2004). For example, in Canada, there is no systematic statistics on private trucking activities, and in the USA, there are significant data gaps for developing precise origin-destination matrices.

  3. Another contributing factor has been the rise in the worldwide demand for other natural resources.

  4. Mexico is not part of the list of annex I countries of the Kyoto Protocol.

  5. Policies in both countries are continuously evolving. In Canada, the conservative government has committed to reducing emissions by 20% by 2020 with respect to 2006. In the USA, the Obama administration has indicated that reducing GHG emissions will become a priority.

  6. For Mexico, the growth is for the 1990–2002 period.

  7. The USA has started deregulating their trucking industry in 1980 with the Motor Carrier Act. Canada has followed with the 1987 Motor Vehicle Transport Act. Mexico started to eliminate economic regulations in 1989.

  8. This process has not been without hurdle. Mexican trucks were first allowed to carry goods to commercial area within 20 miles from the Mexican–US border. In 1995, they were granted access to four US states along the border and to Canada. It is only in 2002 that Mexican carriers were allowed to obtain a certification to have access to the entire US territory for international transport activities. Cabotage remains forbidden in the three countries.

  9. For the USA, Ogburn and Ramroth (2007) indicate that from 1970 to 2005, US tractor–trailer fuel economy increased by only 0.6%/year.

  10. Based on a review of 200 estimates, Tol (2007) concludes that the social cost of carbon would be less than 10$/tonne of CO2. Note that the Stern’s Review uses a value of 85$/tonne of CO2.

  11. Examples of such programs include SwartWay in the US and SmartDriver in Canada.

  12. An example is the agreement between the Alberta government and the Alberta Motor Transport Association.

  13. From 2004 to 2006, a rebate was offered in Canada for installing auxiliary power units to reduce idle fuel consumption.

  14. Reduction in speed significantly improves fuel efficiency.

  15. For example, Gamper-Rabindran (2006) shows that the US voluntary program 33–50, aimed at reduction toxic releases, has had little impact. Barla (2007) shows that Quebec pulp and paper plants that are certified ISO-14001 do not reduce significantly their effluents.

  16. Note that since 2008 Quebec has a small tax on carbon which is collected on energy firms (about 3C$/ton of CO2). Effective July 1, 2008, British Columbia also impose a carbon tax which should progressively increase to 30C$/ton of CO2 by 2012.

  17. During the 2008 federal political campaign in Canada, one of the major political party proposed imposing such a tax while reducing at the same time other distortionary taxes. This party lost the election in part because of this green shift.

  18. We have deduced these estimates using the fuel surcharge imposed by a few Canadian and US carriers.

  19. From 2003 to 2005, the Canadian dollar has increased its value by more than 15% relatively to the US dollar.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank two anonymous referees for their useful remarks.

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  1. Center for Data and Analysis in Transportation (CDAT), Département d’économique, Université Laval, 1025 Avenue des sciences sociales, Québec, QC, G1V 0A6, Canada

    Philippe Barla

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Correspondence to Philippe Barla.

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Barla, P. Greenhouse gas issues in the North American trucking industry. Energy Efficiency 3, 123–131 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-009-9066-6

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