The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has announced that $100 million in funding will be available under the Driving the Nation program in 3 focus areas to support transitioning heavy vehicles to electric.
Highlighting this commitment to decarbonise road transport, ARENA is separately providing $28.6 million in funding to two projects with $19.6 million committed to Linfox and $9 million to Toll – unlocking more than $124 million in investment into freight decarbonisation. Both projects were funded under the 2022 Driving the Nation focus areas.
ARENA CEO Darren Miller said 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,"
"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" Mr Miller said.
"We know 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," Mr Miller said.
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, Australian logistics company, Linfox, will receive $19.6 million to deploy 26 battery electric trucks and charging infrastructure across 3 distribution centres in Queensland, South Australia and Victoria.
The trucks will be deployed over 3 years to a range of customers across metropolitan and regional routes, with the aim to validate the performance of heavy EV trucks over longer distances, multiple duty cycles per day and at scale.
ARENA will also provide Toll with up to $9 million to support its 'Project TruckVolt' which will roll out 28 battery electric trucks and required infrastructure at 10 customer and Toll-owned sites across Australia.
"Supporting both Linfox and Toll to electrify their heavy vehicle fleet is a significant milestone in our 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. 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," said Mr Miller.
Both projects will not only contribute to ARENA's decarbonisation goals but will also assist the industry in assessing the technical and commercial feasibility of electrifying heavy vehicle fleets and showing the transport and freight sectors what is possible when decarbonising heavy vehicles.
The new focus areas under the Driving the Nation Program will be open to applications from 9 November 2024.
