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Freight transport accounts for 8-15% of total traffic flow in urban areas within the European Union. The majority of these deliveries are undertaken by diesel-powered vehicles with extremely disproportionate levels of CO2, NOx and particulate matter emissions. Accordingly, a variety of strategic option shave been advanced as key solutions for addressing fossil fuel demand and emissions in urban freight transport. This paper progresses the discourse on hydrogen vehicles as viable strategic options for addressing sustainability concerns in urban logistics by undertaking a comprehensive total cost of ownership analysis. Outcomes from this study not only support the economic competitiveness of hydrogen vehicles, but also analyse implications of several future policy and market scenarios. Highlights: This paper advances a cost model for calculating the total cost of ownership, with results demonstrating highlighting the most competitive fuel vehicle options for commercial use in the UK, accounting for tax relief and grants for low emission vehicles. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed cost-model offers the most comprehensive model for evaluating economic competitiveness of alternative energy sources for transport vehicles.  Our research also presents evidence to validate subsidies and other reliefs as critical to improving the competitiveness of battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles for commercial use.  Finally, the paper, informs on the importance of combined policy tools for promoting and achieving low carbon energy adoption in urban logistics and transport operations.

With road freight transport continuing to dominate global freight transport operations, there is increasing pressure on the freight transport industry and its stakeholders to address concerns over its sustainability. This paper adopts a systematic review to examine the academic literature on road freight transport sustainability between 2001 and 2018. Using content and thematic analysis, the paper identifies and categorises sustainability intervention mechanisms providing useful insights on key research applications areas and continental distribution of sustainable road freight transport (SRFT) research. In addition to the six-overarching sustainability intervention mechanism themes identified: decoupling, Information and Communications Technology (ICT), modality, operations, policy, and other, future research can explore the effectiveness of different interventions mechanisms identified in this study to improve sustainable practices across different continents.

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