Comparative life cycle assessment of heavy-duty drivetrains: A Norwegian study case

•A complete process based LCA of three heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) powertrains is conducted.•A novel approach to overcome the inaccessibility to industry-related data is presented.•Three different vehicle technologies are compared among them from the environmental perspective.•Influence of clean heavy road transport technologies on climate change is also studied.•The battery electric truck shows better environmental performances in all considered indicators.•Fuel production pathways significantly influence the environmental performances of clean HDVs. This study investigates the life cycle environmental impacts of three reference heavy-duty trucks (i.e. a conventional diesel truck, a battery electric truck, and a fuel cell electric truck) considering the type of energy used, the energy sources and their production pathways. The environmental impacts are studied from a life cycle perspective, encompassing the entire value chains while employing the well-to-wheel approach for the propelling energies. Using publicly available data, the adopted approach suppresses the barriers of lack of industry-related data and amplify the accuracy of heavy-road transport emissions quantification. Results exhibit that the full electric truck (BET) can cut up to 68% of GHG (i.e. about 0.621 kg CO2-eq per km) while the hydrogen fuel cell electric truck may induce a reduction of up to 48% of GHG (i.e. ~ 0.430 kg CO2-eq per km) emitted by a Euro VI truck of same category under same operating conditions.