Impacts of different environmentally differentiated truck charges on mileage, fleet composition and emissions in Germany and Sweden

During the last decade six central European countries (Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Switzerland) have introduced distance-based network tolls for heavy trucks. In Sweden, Denmark and the Benelux states the time-based Eurovignette is applied since the 1990-ies. All charging systems include a differentiation according to emission class for CO, HC, NOx, PM and smoke, but the Eurovignette is not updated to the latest emission classes. The study addresses Sweden and Germany as representatives for the time-based and distance-based charging system. The German toll is much higher than the Eurovignette for all real journeys; in addition the German government subsidises the purchase of clean trucks – which implies larger incentives for German hauliers (than Swedish hauliers) to use cleaner trucks. As expected, the German fleet is cleaner than the Swedish fleet and the vehicle kilometres performed on German roads are cleaner than the vehicle kilometres performed on Swedish roads. There are spill over effects between the countries in the way that European hauliers have incentives to use their “cleanest trucks” in the countries that have introduced tolls differentiated by the latest emission class and their “dirtiest trucks” in the Eurovignette countries. The difference between the two groups of countries and the incentives to use the cleaner vehicles in the toll countries and the dirtier vehicles in the Eurovignette countries will increase as updates are planned for the tolls but not for the Eurovignette.