Supreme Court ruling is a ticking time bomb for logistics

The case related to the EU Air Quality directive which has been consistently breached by the UK in 40 of the 43 zones since 2010.

Client Earth challenged the Secretary of State over this failure all the way to the Supreme Court and won.

The directive requires that the government brings forward a plan, if it is unable to meet the emissions commitment, demonstrating how it would go about rectifying the failure in a reasonable period of time.

Wading through the legal mumbo-jumbo, the court found that there is no plan; it also found that the government, in contesting the case, was incorrect to rely on clauses in the directive for its failure to act. Perhaps inevitably, it has been referred back to the Court of Justice of the European Union.

The challenge has strengthened due to changing scientific conclusions in the last two years. It has emerged that Nitrogen Oxides and small particulate emissions (PM2.5) are deadly.

This is now recognised by DEFRA whose official estimates are that between 35,000 to 50,000 people die prematurely due to air quality issues at a cost to the economy of £15bn, albeit with a wide range from £8bn to £17bn (Transport for Greater Manchester – Air Quality Report).

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Transport is the single biggest contributor to these emissions and it appears that vehicle design and regulation has driven the market towards diesel power. 

A report by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe shows that the performance of engines in terms of CO2 and sulphur has improved dramatically. The diesel engine has surged in popularity as part of this trend. But in a classic example of the law of unintended consequences, diesel is now cast as the source of this new threat.

Freight and logistics movements are almost exclusively powered by diesel and the statistics point to commercial vehicles (trucks and vans) contributing around 25% of transport emissions from just 5% of the national vehicle population.

Any plan prepared by the Government as a result of the judgement will have to address transport emissions and, within that, freight as a specific subsector. 

Failure to act will inevitably lead to further legal action, with the risk of large fines being imposed on cities; these will drive a redefinition of the economic balance and fiscal sustainability.

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Any plan will need to recognise this risk alongside the policy objective of the European Commission to achieve essentially zero-carbon city logistics by 2030. That is only 15 years away and, in the lifespan of a commercial vehicle, it is between two and three cycles of replacement: so no time at all. 

This time-bomb is now well and truly ticking. Its implications are that we are going to have to re-think how we move our goods through our supply chains; if we do not, the judgement has the potential to unleash a tsunami of regulation and cost on the established ways of doing things.

This is not a case of not knowing the answers – mostly we do at the component level. The future is urban consolidation by sector, use of electric trucks and increased use of rail for long distances. The challenge is to understand how these components of the solution will be strung together in completely new supply chains and what the new ‘operating model’ will look and feel like. 

Public policy determination in this operational metamorphosis will be crucial since aspects of land use, freight superhighways and access constraints, lorry charging and rail capacity will all influence the design of the supply chains of the future for sustainable cities. The freight industry and policy makers will have to come together like never before to work out these new solutions.