Roeth: How global trucking fleets are cutting GHG emissions

While the news on the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions front is not great, in the U.S., GHG emissions declined by 27.30 million tons CO2e (4.54%) from August 2024 to August 2025, according to Climate TRACE. On the other hand, global GHG emissions totaled 5.26 billion tons of CO2e, a 0.40% increase.

China is the world’s largest emitter of GHG, and its emissions were up 0.33%. However, I know there is work underway in China to move freight in a cleaner manner. The Rush to Zero Carbon tracked the real-world performance of new energy heavy-duty trucks across multiple regions and routes in China. According to the project’s website, “New energy heavy trucks—powered by batteries, battery-swapping systems, or hydrogen fuel cells—represent the most promising route toward zero-carbon freight transport.”

RMI China used NACFE’s Run on Less process to design the Rush to Zero Carbon effort in China. We coached the team there on how to execute such an event/study, and I was able to share our learnings from North America live at their finale on October 22.

The project covered three key technologies—battery-charging, battery-swapping, and hydrogen fuel cell heavy-duty trucks. The trucks operated across representative routes in Sichuan–Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, the Shenzhen–Dongguan–Huizhou area, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region.

And China is not the only other country where efforts are underway to reduce emissions from transportation. Fleets in different countries are addressing best practices for reducing GHG and other trucking-related emissions.

I should point out that the GHG emissions reported by Climate TRACE were not just from trucking. They also tracked emissions in agriculture, manufacturing, and waste.

In order to reduce GHG emissions, it will take more than the efforts of the trucking industry. GHG emissions are a problem across a variety of industries, and each sector needs to look at how it can reduce emissions. It will take a concerted effort to make the air and our climate cleaner for all of us.

And while trucking is not homogeneous across nations—heck, it is not even homogeneous across the U.S., with fleets operating in local delivery, regional haul, and long-haul applications—I believe there are probably some best practices that can be shared across national boundaries.

Efforts like NACFE’s Run on Less and RMI’s Rush to Zero Carbon are two good examples of what can be learned from real-world demonstrations. Seeing how technologies perform when delivering real goods on real routes in real road conditions is the best way to get fleet buy-in.

I am not discounting manufacturers' claims or experts' presentations on how various alternative powertrain solutions should help reduce emissions and improve efficiency, but—to be cliché—fleets want to see results where the rubber meets the road. That is why monitoring actual trucks as they go about their daily routes is invaluable.

If you are involved in or learn of any other efforts to quantify emissions reductions in trucking, please let me know. Emissions reduction is a problem that will need the combined efforts of the global trucking industry. The more knowledge we can share about which technologies reduce emissions in specific duty cycles while still allowing fleets to operate profitably, the faster we will get to a cleaner freight future. And that is something we should all strive for, regardless of the powertrain technology we champion.