Emissions

When a vehicle is moving, the fuel or electricity consumption releases various pollutants into the atmosphere. In several countries, companies are subject to laws aimed at limiting global warming and improving air quality. Depending on the country's law, companies may be required to report what type and mass of pollutants they have released into the atmosphere.

In simple terms, emissions are calculated by multiplying fuel consumption values with emission factors.

To calculate emissions fuelType, emissionStandard and bioFuelRatio are relevant for combustion vehicles, electricityType is relevant for electric vehicles. For hybrid vehicles, all of them are relevant including the hybridRatio. The given averageFuelConsumption and averageElectricityConsumption can be considered, or they can be calculated using default values from HBEFA. In that case loadWeight, emptyWeight and totalPermittedWeight are also relevant to obtain proper results.

Emissions metrics

Fuel consumption

Fuel consumption represents the amount of fuel (kilograms or liters) that was consumed during the route.

CO₂-equivalent

Carbon dioxide is the best known greenhouse gas. However, there are other pollutants that have an effect on global warming. These gases can have a very significant warming power. The main greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O).

Based on the warming power of carbon dioxide, the Global Warming Potential (GWP) can be defined. The CO₂ has a GWP of 1, methane 25 and nitrous oxide 300. With the Global Warming Potential we can define a new metric called CO2-equivalent (CO2e) that represents the sum of the multiplication of all greenhouse gases by their Global Warming Potential.

Well to wheel, tank to wheel

The well-to-wheel metric refers to the emissions from the production of the primary fuel to the fuel consumed during the route. It includes production of the primary fuel, the transport of the primary fuel, the production of road fuel, the distribution of the road fuel and the consumption of this road fuel in the vehicle.

The tank-to-wheel metric only refers to the consumption during the route.

Example

The list of emission values is contained in RouteResponse.emissions. The emissions standards to be computed can be selected by using the results parameter.

This example shows how to request a route with the EMISSIONS_EN16258_2012_HBEFA standard and the EUR_TRAILER_TRUCK vehicle profile.

https://api.myptv.com/routing/v1/routes?waypoints=49.0133618,8.4277972&waypoints=48.8950289,8.6715602&profile=EUR_TRAILER_TRUCK&results=EMISSIONS_EN16258_2012_HBEFA&options[trafficMode]=AVERAGE

The result of the request above will look like this:

{
    "distance": 26853,
    "travelTime": 2082,
    "violated": false,
    "emissions": {
      "en16258_2012": {
        "fuelConsumption": 14.066087022979605,
        "co2eTankToWheel": 45.13996676845619,
        "co2eWellToWheel": 54.77658888756478,
        "energyUseTankToWheel": 606.9381299578937,
        "energyUseWellToWheel": 721.9013412034008
      }
    }
  }

Depending on the chosen standard, each emission item contains standard-specific emission values.

HBEFA

The Handbook of Emission Factors for Road Transport (HBEFA) was originally developed on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agencies of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In the meantime, further countries (Sweden, Norway and France) as well as the JRC (European Research Center of the European Commission) are supporting HBEFA. HBEFA provides emission values, i.e. the specific emissions in g/km for all current vehicle categories (PC, LCV, HCV, buses and motorcycles), each divided into different categories, for a wide variety of traffic situations.

The first version (HBEFA 1.1) was published in December 1995, an update (HBEFA 1.2) followed in January 1999. Version HBEFA 2.1 was available in February 2004. The newest versions date are January 2010 (HBEFA 3.1), July 2014 (HBEFA 3.2), September 2019 (HBEFA 4.1) and January 2022 (HBEFA 4.2).

HBEFA calculation reports values for all global warming gases and other harmful substances. The internal process is independently certificated and therefore is independent of any external organizations.

HBEFA also provides the calculation of the fuel and electricity consumption considering defaults for the given vehicle and taking the actually driven roads (their classes and gradients) into account.

Influence of payload

When using a HBEFA-based method, the user can give the vehicle load information in order to have more precise emissions factors. The PTV Developer Routing API needs 3 values

• emptyWeight (the empty weight of the vehicle [kg])
• loadWeight (the weight of the vehicle's load [kg])
• totalPermittedWeight (the total permitted weight of the vehicle and load [kg])

Available emission standards

Try it in the Emissions code sample.

For detailed information on emission-related vehicle parameters see the Vehicle Parameters concept.