MTA Low Carbon winner JLP wants to take the high road to zero emissions

John Lewis Partnership (JLP) picked up the Motor Transport Low Carbon Award for the third time in the last seven years in 2024.

Its winning entry stated: “As a responsible retailer we must reduce our consumption, find renewable alternatives, and look critically at our impact across our entire value chain and take action.”

That of course includes the transport operations and the entry went on: “We are in a time of real revolution in fleets, with JLP seeing our transport fleet decarbonising operations through significant investment in new, greener technologies. Our commitment is to end the use of fossil fuels across our transport fleet by 2030 and we have already reduced the carbon emissions of our fleet by over 40% through efficiency and the use of biomethane trucks, innovative electrically driven trailer refrigeration and electric vans in our e-com and home services fleets.”

That means:

● All JLP heavy trucks will be running on biomethane by 2028

● The Partnership will stop using fossil fuels by 2030 with all vans and light trucks being electric, all trailer fridges powered electrically, either using mains power when on a dock or by an additional 415V three-phase alternator on the tractors powering the trailers when coupled up, and any remaining niches, for example the combine harvester on JLP’s farmland, will run on HVO.

Looking further ahead, JLP has a company-wide commitment to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2035, which will mean an end to the use of intermediate renewable fuels like biomethane (though see below) and HVO within five years of its 2030 deadline to stop using fossil fuels.

“By 2030, all the vans need to be electric, all the fridges need to be run on electricity or HVO, our shunters will probably be on HVO and all our heavy trucks will be on biomethane,” Justin Laney, general manager of fleet at JLP (pictured), explains. “To get from there to zero by 2035 will mean all the trucks will have to be electric or on zero-carbon biomethane which is becoming available.

“I can’t see battery electric trucks achieving an acceptable TCO soon enough to replace all of our gas tractor units in that timeframe.”

Since May 2024 JLP, together with Volvo and Flexible Power Systems, has been part of Project Jolt (Joint Operator Logistics Trial) under which is it running an FM 4x2 battery electric tractor unit.

“A Scania and another truck will be joining it and we are learning a lot from that,” says Laney. “You can make it work in the operation but we couldn’t replace a fleet of 100 gas trucks with 100 EVs. On busy days there are trucks that will only be still for two hours in 24. If we want to rapid charge say 50 trucks at 0.5MW we aren’t going to get a 25MW supply in – that’s what you need for a small town.”

Laney would like to see the government incentivise the use of low carbon renewable fuels in heavy trucks rather than keep pushing battery electric as the only alternative to diesel.

“There is a risk in focusing just on electric heavy duty trucks,” he says. “Five gas trucks will achieve the same carbon saving as four electric ones. And you can put those five on the road for the cost of two BEVs.”

JLP went with biomethane rather than HVO partly because all methane road fuels – bio or not – attract a lower fuel duty than diesel – bio or not.

“We chose biomethane for two reasons,” Laney says. “One was cost as biomethane is cheaper, partly because the fuel duty is lower, and you could argue that fuel duty should be linked to carbon content. The other reason was that it is easier to control the supply chain of biomethane. We are closer to where the feedstocks come from and we can be sure they are sustainable whereas with HVO there are more challenges.”

Rather than install private gas filling stations at its depots, JLP acts as an anchor customer for public refuelling stations close to its sites. “That way it encourages other people to use biomethane and means we don’t have to commit to minimum quantities,” says Laney. “We use CNG Fuels for most of our supply and Air Liquide at one site.”

Laney does not see a role for hydrogen in road transport but instead believes that the best solution is an electrified road system (ERS), where electric trucks with small batteries are powered on trunk roads by an overhead catenary.

“If you look at the ways to get to zero tailpipe, batteries cost a huge amount of money, the range is limited, you lose productivity of the vehicles because of the time spent charging and there are all the difficulties of the charging infrastructure,” he argues. “Hydrogen I don’t see because of the lack of efficiency and the challenge of putting in the infrastructure is huge.

“ERS wins out because the trucks are cheapest as the battery is quite small, the catenary kit is relatively low cost as it is already on buses and trams, productivity is higher than battery because they charge on the road, we don’t have to put lots of infrastructure in the depots to charge and the drivers aren’t queuing to use public chargers.”

Pick a winner

The DfT remains wedded to the approach of setting emissions targets and letting the market decide the best way to achieve them, but Laney believes this is flawed.

“Of these three solutions, the government has to pick a winner so people know their investment is reasonably safe. It can’t be all three,” he says. “The other thing the government could do is allow Level 4 autonomous trucks to run DC to store as long as they were zero tailpipe.

“That also lends itself to catenary and could reduce empty running. At the moment a truck and trailer go from DC to store and might come back empty. A Level 4 autonomous truck using a catenary could go to wherever the next load is and might not need to come back to the depot for a month until it needs a service.

“Now the truck has to return to base every day because the drivers’ cars are in the car park and they have to get home. That is the kind of thing that would give you the productivity benefit to make the business case and get people investing in it.”

Laney cites a Centre for Sustainable Road Freight (SRF) report from 2020 that estimated the cost of putting catenaries along the UK’s strategic road network would be around £21bn. This could be funded by infrastructure providers who would then sell electricity to users. Siemens and Scania are keen proponents of ERS which has been trialled in Germany and Sweden.

“It’s a third of the cost of HS2 and much, much less than a hydrogen infrastructure,” he says. “It is probably less than getting enough battery chargers into public sites or depots. I think it was wrong to exclude them from the Zehid programme as the SRF had a proposal to run a catenary trial between Immingham and Doncaster.

“We would have taken part in that and it would have been fascinating to see the results. What Zehid is teaching us the challenges of productivity and range.”

One difficulty in the UK is our love of 4.95m doubledeck trailers, which leave only a 5cm gap under the UK’s standard 5m motorway bridges. “You would pitch the wire at 5m and, under a bridge where there isn’t room for all the stuff you need, you have a dummy wire,” Laney says. “Or, as they do in Germany, the catenary senses when the wire has come to an end and drops automatically.”

Scoping out the next set of emissions reduction targets

Emissions from the road fleet are a large part of JLP’s Scope 1 and 2 emissions and with a plan in place to eradicate these Laney is now turning to Scope 3, which include the embedded emissions in the vehicles he uses.

“We have to start looking at Scope 3,” he says. “We have asked the manufacturers how much carbon is in their vehicles and at the moment they can’t tell us. But they will have to quite soon as a lot of customers are going to asking about the carbon content.

“Some countries are better placed than others. Sweden has a very clean grid so you would expect them to be generally low whereas China has a real challenge in that respect.”