Assessing the impact of gross emitting vehicles

Author: Jeff Bluett, Greg Haldane, and Sharon Atkins

Source: Pattle Delamore Partners Ltd & New Zealand Transport Agency

Year: 2019

Introduction

Road-side vehicle emission monitoring using a remote sensing device (RSD) technology is recognised internationally as a useful and cost-effective method of collecting large amounts of real world vehicle emission data. Beginning in 2003 there have been five RSD monitoring campaigns in New Zealand with the last campaign being completed in Auckland, in 2015. At present, there are over 120,000 valid light duty vehicle emission measurements in the RSD database. The on-road emission measurements are linked to individual vehicles using the vehicle’s licence plate and data contained in the Motor Vehicle Registry.

Previous remote sensing campaigns undertaken have confirmed the increasing age of New Zealand’s on-road vehicle fleet, and identified that a small number of high “gross emitting vehicles” (GEVs) have a disproportionate impact on total fleet emissions. The profiling of GEVs enables the identification of possible interventions for these vehicles.

Integrating the information extracted from the RSD database on GEVs with the data contained in the motor vehicle register (including vehicle age, mileage, engine size, and emissions control), provides a powerful investigative tool. Aligning these two sources of data, allows us to advance our understanding of GEVs by identifying:

• How many GEVs there are likely to be in New Zealand?
• How long they stay in the on-road vehicle fleet?
• How far they travel each year?
• What is their impact on total emissions?

The New Zealand Transport Agency have funded a project which aims to provide answers to each of these questions and can be used to evaluate potential interventions (e.g., scrappage schemes, in-service vehicle testing) to reduce the impact of emissions from gross emitters. The Project considers harmful pollutants carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HC), nitrogen monoxide (NO) and uvSmoke (a proxy for particulate emissions). This paper describes the development of a method used to assess the impacts of GEVs with respect to harmful pollutants. In this paper, CO is used as an example.