The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has announced that $100 million will be invested into the Driving the Nation program in three focus areas to support transitioning heavy vehicles to electric.
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Under the 2022 Driving the Nation focus areas, ARENA is committing $19.6 million 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 has an important role to play in reducing the environmental impact of moving goods.
“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.”
Miller says 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 will receive $19.6 million to deploy 26 battery electric trucks and charging infrastructure across three distribution centres in Queensland, South Australia and Victoria.
Over three years the trucks will be deployed to a range of customers across metropolitan and regional routes to validate the performance of heavy EV trucks over longer distances, multiple duty cycles per day and at scale.
To support Toll’s ‘Project TruckVolt’, ARENA will provide them $9 million to roll out 28 battery electric trucks and required infrastructure at 10 customer and Toll-owned sites across Australia.
Miller says supporting Linfox and Toll to electrify their heavy vehicle fleet is a significant milestone in their goal to decarbonise transport.
“By transitioning to electric vehicles, not only are these companies able to reduce their carbon footprint, but it also sets a new standard for sustainability in freight,” he says.
“This is what our Driving the Nation program is about – providing support to businesses to electrify their fleets, and in turn, accelerating the uptake of electric vehicles on our roads.”
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