Scale of investment required in Scotland’s electric lorry transition revealed

The Centre for Sustainable Road Freight (CSRF) said 23 have already been built or are under development in the country, but at least another 40 are needed to power battery electric lorries.

It is now urging HGV operators to help drive the transition to an electric haulage future by providing researchers with data to guide its next report.

The CSRF found that the total population of registered HGVs in Scotland was around 30,000 and the telematics data it harnessed for its study represented approximately 2% of the total, or 600.

Its report showed that the heaviest usage of battery electric HGVs was on the M74/A9 corridors, with the two busiest charger sites needed within an approximate 5km radius of Annandale Water and Dalwhinnie.

The total network would require at least 1.3TWh of electrical power and this would enable around 70% of haulage routes to be completed without additional stops for charging.

The CSRF report said: “Even with just 2% of the current HGV transitioning to BEV, 11 substations do not have sufficient capacity to support the core charging network.

“This is an indication of the scale of additional investment in the energy system which may be required.

“Using the model outputs to conduct a simple calculation of total energy demand reveals substantial extra capacity is going to be required or released.

“While lower than some previous estimates, power consumption in the TWh range will require significant investment.”

Scotland’s cabinet secretary for transport, Fiona Hyslop, said: “This new report helps us to see how much further we need to go to support the transition to battery electric trucks.

“We know that substantial extra capacity is going to be required and we need HGV fleet operators to provide journey data to enable more robust investment decisions to be made.

“With more data reflecting a wider variety of HGV routes, we can map out where those additional charging sites would have the most impact.”