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Addressing Supply- and Demand-Side Heterogeneity and Uncertainty Factors in Transportation LifeCycle Assessment: The Case of Refuse Truck Electrification
Introduction. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) has become a common practice or tool for
evaluating comprehensive environmental and economic performances of various natural and
human-made systems. One of the limitations of typical LCA studies is a lack of generalizability.
That is, results found in one study are often not generalizable, because the analysis is based on
average or case-specific conditions (Lee et al. 2013). Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis can
help, but they dont always explain or predict exactly why and how much the results can
change under different circumstances.
When it comes to transportation LCA, it is well-known that the use phase is generally the
dominant contributor to energy consumption and environmental impact (Lave and Maclean
2000), except in cases of massive infrastructure requirements for transportation in general or for
specific technologies or systems. What we explore here is the extent to which the impact of use
phase components can be parameterized and thus incorporated as predictive variables, which
can help explain the variability and differences between transportation LCA studies and
assumed conditions. Other life-cycle components (e.g., fuel production) can also be
parameterized within an LCA. To demonstrate this, we use refuse truck electrification as a case
study. We conduct a comparative LCA of refuse truck technologies, adopting a parametricmicroscopic approach to systematically deal with an array of different and individual truck
operating conditions and fuel supply-chains. Vehicle use such as driving behavior and refueling
pattern are major demand-side heterogeneity and uncertainty elements. The supply-side
heterogeneity and uncertainty factors include local fuel-sourcing as opposed to centralized fuel
supply, spatio-temporal variations of electric power, and geographical differences in exogenous
factors (e.g., local climate, fuel price, etc.). Overarching uncertainty factors are future fuel price
evolution, the relative importance of current investment over future earnings (or discount rate),
the social benefit of air emissions reductions benefits, etc. Note that here we differentiate
variability and uncertainty. By and large, both variability and uncertainty are part of the
heterogeneity, but variability is deterministic or something that vehicle or fleet operators can
control, while uncertainty refers to those factors that are not very controllable. For example, fuel
price is determined once location and time are fixed. Also, trip characteristics of commercial
vehicles including refuse trucks are also manageable and predictable. However, future fuel price
or the specific feedstock of diesel fuel is not something that individual fleet operators or
managers can control or determine.
Research Objectives. We are interested in comparative environmental and economic benefits
of conventional diesel, compressed natural gas (CNG), and battery electric refuse trucks in the
10 largest metropolitan areas (e.g., New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc.) in the U.S. With
regards to natural gas, we consider not only conventional natural gas but also renewable natural
gas (or biogas) produced from landfills. All of the metropolitan areas being considered here
have landfills that collect methane for transportation or electricity generation with varying
methane resource availability. Currently, almost half of new refuse trucks sold in the U.S. are
CNG, and a battery electric model has recently become available. Given the increasing diversity
of options and the momentum for changes, it may be useful to know whether and how much
society benefits from a transition from the diesel trucks to alternative-fueled trucks such as
natural gas or electricity. So, answering these whether and how much questions is our major
research objective. Also, in doing the evaluation, we attempt to avoid basing our analysis on
fixed or average conditions. We rather look at overall possible ranges of key variables based on
a parametric and spectrum-based modeling approach, addressing or incorporating the supplyand demand-side heterogeneity factors.
Model Year
Manufacturer
Curb Weight (ton)
Payload (ton)
Engine
Maximum Power (kW)
Li-ion Battery
Capacity (kWh)
Battery Electric
Refuse Truck
(BERT)
Motiv Power Systems
18
9.2
280
200 (nominal)
Fuel Tank
Tires
Lifetime Vehicle
Miles Traveled (VMT)
Purchase price ($)
500,000 miles (about 20 years of lifetime with annual VMT of 25,000 miles)
Refueling station
Data sources
Methods. To compare the refuse truck technologies (see Table 1 for specifications), we adopt
a LCA framework for the system boundary which is shown in Figure 1. The functional unit is tonkm, which is a product of the weight (metric tons) of garbage that is collected and transported by
a refuse truck and the total distance traveled (or vehicle miles traveled, VMT). Life-cycle impact
assessment criteria are fresh water consumption (in million gallons) and social life-cycle cost (in
constant 2014 $) of the four target refuse truck technologies. In the absence (to our knowledge)
of a publicly-available LCA model that can answer our research questions or address the issues
aforementioned, here we develop a model called Hybrid PArametric-Microscopic Mobility LifeCycle Assessment (HPAM-LCA) which consists of several sub-modules as follows:
Vehicle and parts manufacture inventory. We take a process-based LCA approach for vehicle
manufacture inventory. We use heavy-duty truck materials composition (Gains et al. 1998) and
modified the data so as to reflect more recent model years (Davis et al. 2014). As for energy
and water requirement and emissions for the production of the materials as well as for vehicle
assembly and end-of-life, we use the GREET model (ANL 2014a). Since GREET is for light-duty
vehicles, we adjust the data based on the differences in vehicle specifications (e.g., engine
displacement, number of tires, frontal area, and etc.) between passenger cars and refuse trucks.
Vehicle use-phase energy consumption and emissions prediction. Based on hundreds of drive
cycle (speed vs. time profile) samples collected from publicly-available sources (FHWA 2004;
ANL 2014b; EPA 2014; ImagineMade 2014), we run vehicle dynamic simulations using
ADVISOR (ImagineMade 2014), augmented with tail-pipe emissions test data from Sandhu et
al.s work (2014). Using drive or duty cycle characterization parameters (e.g., average trip
speed, payload, etc.), we develop a linear regression-based energy and emissions prediction
model complemented with additional parameterized sub-models for predicting energy and
emissions impact for extreme climate (hot and cold) conditions, battery degradation, road grade,
etc. This parametric approach allows us to incorporate microscopic (or heterogeneous) vehicle
Addressing Supply- and Demand-Side Heterogeneity and Uncertainty Factors in Transportation LifeCycle Assessment: The Case of Refuse Truck Electrification
use conditions of individual vehicles or fleets into LCA in an integrated manner, avoiding the
potential bias of averages (Taptich and Horvath 2014) and providing predictive power to LCA.
Note that microscopic models sometimes refer to their functionality of providing per-second
output, which is not the case in our model. LCA is typically for an entire lifetime of a product or
service, so the results are to be aggregated over a long span of time.
changing average trip speed, say, from 4 mph (10th percentile) to 11 mph (90th) results in 30%
variability in the GHG emissions. Driving behavior (or skill) can also result in additional but
smaller variability, as does payload condition (empty to full). All these variability factors are
parametrized and incorporated as operational variables in our model, providing predictability
and explaining variabilities. Regional variations for non-electric trucks are relatively very small
compared to the electric truck.
Figure 2: Life-Cycle Inventory of GHG (CO2e ton). Emissions and Fresh Water Consumption (M gallons).
Overall, electric or landfill gas trucks are favorable over diesel and conventional natural gas
trucks in terms of GHG emissions. Although natural gas has a lower carbon-intensity than diesel
on a per-energy basis, the natural gas truck is less efficient than the diesel counterpart in low
speed operation conditions and has higher upstream GHG emissions, which tends to offset the
lower carbon-intensity advantage of the final fuel product. However, natural gas produced from
landfills provides significant GHG emissions reduction potential for natural gas trucks. As for
different types of feedstocks for petroleum and natural gas fuels (CRC 2013, Gordon et al.
2015), diesel shows the largest variability. With the fugitive methane emissions (1 4%) and
other variation factors, natural gas also shows large (but smaller than diesel) feedstock
variability. In terms of fresh water consumption, non-electric trucks consume virtually no water
during vehicle operation (driving) and thus are better than electric counterparts in general.
However, in some areas such as Boston, LA, and Miami, the electric trucks fresh water
consumption is lower than non-electric counterparts, owing to the higher level of reliance on
Addressing Supply- and Demand-Side Heterogeneity and Uncertainty Factors in Transportation LifeCycle Assessment: The Case of Refuse Truck Electrification
Figure 3: Probability that Each Technology Provides the Least Social Life-Cycle Cost.
Discussion. From the life-cycle inventory or conventional environmental life-cycle impact
assessment standpoints, it seems average trip speed and the type of feedstock can explain and
predict most of the variability. Non-average trip speed variability is not trivial but the significance
is relatively small, as does the payload. However, in different vocations (e.g., long-haul) or
different condition of the same refuse hauling vocation, the relative significance can change. In
the case of non-electric refuse trucks, regional variations are minimal. For example, local
climate will change over the course of day, month, and year, but the variations are cyclic, and
thus the impact of these variables are not significant in comparative LCA looking at entire
product or service lifetime. Depending on regions, driving behavior and payload impact turns out
to be very significant for electric trucks, which implies that these variables would better be
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