The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has committed $100 million more to heavy vehicle electrification with new funding under the Driving the Nation program.
It says it will be targeting three focus areas to support the electric transition.
ARENA is providing $28.6 million in funding to two projects with $19.6 million committed to Linfox and $9 million to Toll – unlocking more than $124 million in investment into freight decarbonisation.
ARENA CEO Darren Miller says the heavy transport sector is a key area that Australia should be focusing on to meet the country’s wider zero emissions goals.
“The heavy vehicle market has matured significantly over the past year in relation to battery electric vehicles, particularly vehicle availability and infrastructure,” he says.
“However, there are still significant hurdles including upfront costs for operators, challenges with charging technology and infrastructure, as well as the lack of real-world data.
“Transport accounts for about one-fifth of Australia’s CO2 emissions, with heavy vehicles a significant share of the transport emissions pool, emphasising why ARENA is focusing in this area of greatest impact.
“We know that customer demand across different modes of transport will continue to increase, with the transport sector expected to become Australia’s largest source of emissions by 2030.”
ARENA’s new focus areas will seek projects that support high impact demonstrations and deployments of electric trucks, the deployment of heavy vehicle charging solutions, and other innovations to encourage the uptake of battery electric vehicles, regardless of size.
Under the 2022 focus areas, Linfox’s funding will go towards deploying 26 battery electric trucks and charging infrastructure across three distribution centres in Queensland, South Australia and Victoria.
The trucks will be deployed over three years to a range of customers across metropolitan and regional routes, with the aim to validate the performance of heavy EV trucks over longer distances, multiple duty cycles per day and at scale.
“As an early adopter of electric vehicles, Linfox is proud to be partnering with the Federal Government to grow our electric fleet and accelerate efforts to decarbonise the logistics and supply chain in Australia,” says Linfox ANZ CEO Mark Mazurek.
Toll’s $9 million of funding will go towards supporting its ‘Project TruckVolt’, which will roll out 28 battery electric trucks and required infrastructure at 10 customer and Toll-owned sites across Australia.
“The funding from ARENA supports an important part of our broader strategy to optimise the environmental sustainability of our operations, and we’re delighted to be supporting our customers through a shared commitment to decarbonising their supply chains without needing to rely solely on carbon offsets,” says Toll Group Managing Director Alan Beacham.
“We’re excited at the prospect of expanding electrification across a larger portion of our fleet over time.”
