New York Clean Trucks Program: An Analysis of the Impacts of Zero-Emission Medium- and Heavy-Duty Trucks on the Environment, Public Health, Industry, and the Economy

The analysis examines all on-road vehicles registered in New York with greater than 8,501 pounds gross vehicle weight, encompassing vehicle weight classes from Class 2b though Class 8. This is a diverse set of mostly commercial vehicles that includes heavy-duty pickups; school and shuttle buses; sanitation, construction, and other types of work trucks; and freight trucks ranging from local delivery vans to tractor-trailers that weigh up to 80,000 pounds when loaded.

Collectively the New York M/HD fleet includes more than 684,000 vehicles that annually travel more than 11.5 billion miles and consume almost 1.3 billion gallons of petroleum-based fuels. In New York M/HD vehicles are currently responsible for an estimated 15.4 million metric tons (MMT) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions annually—approximately 24 percent of all GHGs from the on-road vehicle fleet.1 In New York M/HD vehicles are also responsible for 52 percent of the nitrogen oxide (NOx) and 45 percent of the particulate matter (PM2 ) emitted by on-road vehicles, both of which contribute to poor air quality and resulting negative health impacts in many urban areas, including low-income and disadvantaged communities that are often disproportionately affected by emissions from freight movement due to their proximity to transportation infrastructure.