Sustainable transport and logistics expert group

• Real world emissions: As a leading expert in the field of real-world emissions from traffic and transport, STL has been monitoring emissions and fuel efficiency from motor vehicles on the road under real driving conditions for many years. With our methodologies we contribute to advanced legislative test procedures and monitoring methods to improve emission performance and fuel efficiency.

• Our measurement results provide indispensable inputs to emission inventories and air quality modelling and support the development of effective policies. In recent years the scope of STL’s emission monitoring work has broadened to other transport modes such as inland and maritime shipping, rail and non-road mobile machinery and has expanded to include non-exhaust emissions from brake and tyre wear.

• Towards zero emissions: As part of the overall transition to a low or zero carbon economy by 2050, effective strategies need to be developed and implemented for decarbonising passenger and freight transport. In support of that STL performs techno-economic assessments of future sustainable propulsion options and energy carriers and the associated fuelling and charging infrastructure.

• Green maritime performance: Different STL expertise areas contribute to TNO’s work for the maritime sector. STL supports the Dutch and international maritime ecosystem in its transition to sustainable shipping with emission measurements and technology assessments of alternative fuels and propulsion options, scenario studies and the development of sectoral strategies.

We contribute to speeding-up the development and implementation of innovations in freight transport and logistics to realize much-needed improvements in terms of efficiency, reliability and sustainability.

The activities are clustered around three main topics that are interrelated and all lead towards a futureproof smart logistics system:

• Development, implementation and scaling-up of innovative organizational logistics concepts (such as hub concepts in city logistics).

• The integration and evaluation of automated transport in the logistics operation, including efforts and requirements to ‘make it work'. Next to that, STL provides insights in benefits of automated transport for logistics companies, governments and society (such as stepwise development towards fully automated road transport from hub to hub on the highway).

• Development of data driven (de)central autonomous planning algorithms for sharing of assets in systems of connected logistics networks (such as exchanging truck capacity between transport companies to organise logistics in a much more efficient way).