Freight transport accounts for a substantial share of global greenhouse-gas emissions and is expected to grow strongly in the coming decades. Against this backdrop, a new paper examines how academic research addresses the decarbonisation of road freight and urban logistics. The results reveal a rapidly expanding field that remains surprisingly fragmented and heavily technology-centred.
Rapid growth but strong technological bias
The literature on road freight decarbonisation has grown quickly, especially after 2015. The review identified more than 140 publications on road freight and 85 on urban freight. Despite this growth, research is unevenly distributed across decarbonisation strategies.
Most studies focus on technological solutions, particularly electrification, alternative fuels, and improvements in vehicle efficiency. When categorised using the Avoid–Shift–Improve (ASI) framework, research addressing the “Improve” dimension dominates by a wide margin. Studies on reducing demand (“Avoid”) and shifting freight to lower-carbon modes (“Shift”) are significantly fewer.
This imbalance becomes even more striking when looking at integrated approaches. Only a very small share of studies address multiple decarbonisation levers simultaneously, and only one paper in the broader search explicitly covers all three ASI dimensions. Even within the core sample of road freight studies, fewer than 1 in 10 adopt a multidimensional perspective.
Fragmentation and lack of system thinking
The most important finding is not simply the technological focus, but the lack of systemic thinking. Most research analyses individual interventions in isolation rather than examining how different measures interact.
Electrification illustrates this clearly. While widely studied and considered essential, the literature consistently shows that electrification alone cannot deliver the emission reductions needed to reach climate targets. Deep decarbonisation requires a combination of technological change, demand reduction, and modal shift.
Modal shift research highlights similar challenges. Moving freight from road to rail or waterways offers substantial emission-reduction potential, but requires coordinated policy support, infrastructure investment, and behavioural change among logistics decision-makers. These enabling conditions are often treated separately rather than as part of an integrated transition pathway.
Demand-reduction strategies receive the least attention, despite their importance. Measures such as consolidation, circular economy practices, and land-use planning are recognised as promising but remain under-researched compared with vehicle technologies.
Urban freight: more experimentation, limited integration
Urban freight research shows somewhat stronger attention to operational efficiency and logistics optimisation. Common topics include routing optimisation, consolidation centres, micro-depots, cargo bikes, and electrification. However, even in the urban context, integrated decarbonisation pathways remain largely absent.
Most studies focus on improving specific technologies or operations rather than developing comprehensive strategies that combine demand, modal, and technological measures.
A clear research gap
Overall, the study concludes that academic research on freight decarbonisation remains fragmented and siloed. While many individual solutions have been explored, few studies examine how they work together in real-world transition pathways.
The key message is that future research must move beyond isolated interventions and adopt integrated, system-level approaches that support coherent decarbonisation strategies.
In short, the field has made significant progress in studying individual solutions, but still lacks a comprehensive understanding of how to combine them effectively to achieve deep decarbonisation.