The Impact of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles for Freight Transport on CO2 Emissions: a Case Study

The Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) provides, among other actions, investments in charging stations for hydrogen vehicles. In this paper, the impact that this intervention could have on CO2 emissions is estimated, regarding the case study of the Campania Region. The procedure used, which can also be applied to other territorial contexts, is based on the construction of a freight transport simulation model, which required the construction of a supply model and the estimation of freight demand. The estimate covers the period between 2025 and 2040 and is based, in addition to the NRRP forecasts, on the trend in road freight traffic. The main obtained results show how it is possible to reduce CO2 emissions between 5.83% and 10.71%, in the most favourable case of hydrogen production entirely from renewable sources.