Barriers and drivers and their interconnection to decarbonize Road Freight Transport - Colombian case study

Governments have set ambitious goals to reduce emissions, however, what makes a sectoral decarbonization strategy successful? Many industrialized countries are failing to decarbonize their transport sector and at the same time, transport-related emissions in emerging economies are increasing. In exploring the factors and their interconnections, what are the barriers and drivers blocking or enabling transitions to NetZero? This fundamental question drives this comprehensive qualitative analysis of stakeholder perspectives on the barriers and drivers for decarbonizing road freight transport in an emerging economy. The objective of this study is to contest the current trends by revealing the value of public-private collaborative efforts to establish effective and concerted decarbonization roadmaps and strategies. Our research addresses this goal in a two-phase approach, first looking for “the what” are the factors, and second “the how” are they interrelated. To achieve our goal, we collected qualitative data in focus groups with the participation of 32 public and private sector organizations in four thematic areas, namely - regulation, technology, financing, and Information and Communications Technology. The subsequent content analysis reveals that a lack of awareness of new technologies is the main barrier, while incentives to facilitate the adoption of new technologies are considered the main driver towards decarbonization. Further, possible solutions emerged in the discussion, including putting in place infrastructure for the provision of zero emissions fuels, scrapping old trucks, and assessing the applicability of each of the technologies based on their technical and economic feasibility. In the second phase, we apply the Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) methodology to find the relationships between the previously identified factors and their priority levels, using a group of 11 public and private sector experts in a Delphi panel in two rounds. This study generates insights into the socio, political, and technical factors that have the potential to influence the sector to set a successful decarbonization strategy giving a special focus on the steps and factors that we should address previous to selecting the technology strategy that can support the country in reaching its NetZero target. Outputs from this research can be used as a guide for constructing roadmaps for policymakers and practitioners in transport decarbonization for company-level and country-level action.

Andrés Felipe Rey started the Ph.D. program at KLU in September 2022 under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Gordon Wilmsmeier and Prof. Dr. Johannes Meuer. His research focuses on decarbonizing Road Freight Transportation in emerging countries. Before joining the Ph.D. program at KLU, Andrés received a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering from ICESI University with a certification in Supply Chain Management from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the National University of Colombia. Previously, he had 18 years of experience in the supply chain field. In the private sector, he has worked as a leader of operations and implementation projects in supply chains in countries such as Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela. In the public sector, he contributes to policy design as a Senior Consultant for the National Planning Department (DNP) with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and as an advisor and project contributor for multilateral banking such as the World Bank for Bolivia, IDB for Peru, CAF for Panama, and ICLEI for Colombia. Recently, he has been working with Universidad de los Andes and Cardiff University for the last 3 years in the GiroZero project funded by UKPACT to decarbonize Road Freight Transport in Colombia.