Transport/
Road Transportation
Heavy-Duty Diesel Vehicles

In black: National Greenhouse Gas Inventory (NIR), national sectoral total. Shaded regions: data from National Energy Use Database (NEUD) of emissions from diesel-burning medium and heavy trucks, reduced in recent years by rising use of biodiesel and renewable diesel. The top of the stacked shaded regions should match the NIR total, and I don't know why they don't match more closely.

How might Canada reduce these emissions to zero?

Critical Success Factors

The reduction of emissions from heavy-duty diesel vehicles seems to require some combination of the following:

1. Reduce demand for road freight (perhaps by shifting it to marine or rail)
2. Reduce the mass of freight or the distance it must travel (already a major consideration in logistics)
3. Reduce use of fossil fuels for heavy-duty vehicle applications (use other fuels, energy sources)
4. Increase energy efficiency of heavy-duty vehicles (e.g. via electric motors)
5. Reduce use of buses (without incurring greater emissions in other sectors)
6. Reduce use of fossil fuels to power buses

Barriers

• Technology Gap: Freight movement is energy intensive, in that it is almost purely the conversion of energy into propulsion to move materials from one point to another. Diesel is an affordable fuel with high energy density, there is no obvious replacement.
• Renewable Diesel: Renewable diesel fuel (e.g. B99 or B100) can currently replace diesel at a price premium of only about 25%, can be made from canola or waste cooking oil. The catch is that to make enough of it to power all heavy vehicles would require something like twice Canada's current amount of farmland, and it may not be the best use of that land.
• Batteries: Today's EV battery technology cannot carry enough charge, at low enough weight, or low enough cost, or recharge quickly enough, to support today's trucking practices without operational changes that would hurt operational efficiency.
• Grid Readiness: Freight movement needs a lot of energy. Electric truck propulsion is more energy-efficient than diesel by a factor of roughly 3x (much less energy is wasted as heat). Still, moving 2022's freight work by electricity would have required 15-20% more electricity than Canada produced in that year. (Canada produced about 560 terawatt hours of electricity in 2022 and 2023 , the freight industry used about 263 terawatt hours of energy in diesel fuel.)
• Asset Life: Heavy freight trucks are usually replaced on average every 15-20 years (see stock/sales ratio, NEUD). Even compelling new technology would likely take decades to roll out across the sector.
• Charging Infrastructure: There is no technology standard or installed base of charging equipment across Canada suitable for charging heavy-duty vehicles. Several systems are in development around the world; the process of trialing and scaling one or several in Canada will take time and money.
• Geography: Canada's population is mostly spread along a thin strip of sparsely populated territory, which is one of the most energy-demanding topologies to support with a transportation or logistics network. It is also cold, which challenges many battery technologies.

Possible Strategies

Posts developing this page

• Heavy-Duty Diesel Vehicles: Emissions Calculations (Apr 01, 2026)