Mitigation of Air Pollution Impacts of Irish Heavy Duty Vehicles (MAP-HDV)

Project Description

Heavy Duty Vehicles (HDV) which include lorries, trucks and buses (>3.5t), produce significant vehicular emission which is expected to increase due to economic growth and subsequent increase in freight movement in Ireland. Until now this sector had attracted little attention of environmentalists and policy makers in relation to strategy development and implementation to mitigate the emission levels. Ireland has adopted the European 'Low-emission mobility strategy' as well as the national target to have 20% energy efficiency by 2020. These goals created the imminent need of addressing the issue of tackling vehicular emission from Irish HDV fleet. The goal of the MAP-HDV project is to explore and establish environmental, economic and health impact of the vehicular emission generated from the Irish HDV fleet along with developing an appropriate tool-kit to monitor and calculate future energy consumption and related vehicular emission from the fleet using most advanced simulation tools. Furthermore research attention will be focussed on exploring and evaluating a set of fleet and demand management tools learned from international and European best practices to mitigate vehicular emission including CO2 by developing a scenario-based modelling approach. By evaluating the potential environmental and economic impacts and long-term sustainability of multiple measures a suit of the most suitable ones chosen through survey and expert advice will be recommended for possible implementation. The policy implications of these plans will be discussed as well as a guidelines to achieve the aforementioned goals in this sector will be recommended.