Fleet-Level Decarbonization Analysis of the US Off-Road Sector with VISION: Off-Road

In the United States (US), the off-road sector (i.e., agriculture, construction, etc.) contributes to approximately 10% of the country’s transportation greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, similar to the aviation sector. The off-road sector can be classified into 11 sub-sectors, which include 85 equipment types. The horsepower of these equipment ranges from 1 to 3000 and have very different types of utilization over their lifetime, which makes decarbonization a complex endeavor. To address this, Argonne’s on-road vehicle fleet model, VISION, has been expanded to the off-road sector. The GHG emissions factors for several energy carriers (biofuels, electricity, and hydrogen) have been incorporated from GREET for a sector-wide well-to-wheel life cycle GHG emissions analysis of the present as well as future fleet. Several technology adoption and energy decarbonization scenarios were modeled to better understand the appropriate actions required to approximate net-zero emissions of the off-road sector. Results show that decarbonization up to 78% can be achieved by 2050, but that more aggressive levels of fleet turnover, energy carrier decarbonization, and efficiency improvements are necessary to reach 100% net-zero GHG emissions from the sector.