An insurer’s risk view of freight decarbonisation — and what it leaves out
What the AXA XL report finds, what it does not cover, and where that leaves an operator running diesel today
The short version
- A commercial insurer has published its risk view of freight decarbonisation. It is worth reading because it is written from the claims side rather than the sustainability side.
- Its central finding: the technical transition is moving faster than the repair and insurance infrastructure around it. Electric vehicles cost more to fix, and alternative marine fuels each carry a different unresolved exposure.
- The report does not discuss efficiency measures applied to existing engines at all. No air-filter treatment, no additive, no retrofit. We say so plainly, because this piece is published by a company that sells one.
- What follows on the report’s own terms: most freight will run on combustion engines for years, and the cost of that fleet is the operator’s problem now, not in 2035.
What the report says
‘Freight in a low-carbon economy: Managing the risks’, AXA XL — axaxl.com — August 2026 (PDF, opens on the publisher’s site).
On road transport
Collision frequency for electric vehicles is described as comparable or even better. The cost of each loss is not: electric vehicles can cost 20% to 25% more to repair than internal-combustion models with equivalent damage, according to Poonam Sejpal, Head of Motor Underwriting for UK & Lloyds at AXA XL. Repair capacity is stretched, and the report cites an average three-month repair time at one major manufacturer — long enough that replacement hire can push the cost of a repair beyond the value of the vehicle. For freight specifically, it notes the Tesla Semi at USD 290,000 and the need to keep such a vehicle working for years to recover that outlay.
On shipping
Around 90% of the world’s freight moves by sea. The report assesses the alternatives and finds none that rates consistently well across availability, carbon reduction, infrastructure readiness, safety and regulatory acceptance. Ammonia offers roughly a 90% reduction in greenhouse gases on a well-to-wake basis but is highly toxic; AXA XL is examining release scenarios as part of the ARISE consortium. One participant’s summary of the regulatory position, quoted in the report: the industry is ‘very confused’.
That quote belongs to the person who said it, not to the report as a whole — and the report is a risk assessment, not a forecast.
What the report does not cover
It does not mention our category at all
The report does not mention air-filter treatments, fuel additives or any efficiency measure applied to existing engines. We checked the full text. The category does not appear.
We are stating that because the alternative would be dishonest. This piece is published by a company that sells exactly that kind of treatment, and a reader moving from an insurer’s analysis to our product would reasonably assume the insurer had endorsed it. It has not, and it did not consider the question.
Nor does the report make the macroeconomic case that is often attached to it — shares of global emissions, EU reduction targets, port emissions totals. Those figures come from other bodies entirely. Where we do not have the source in front of us, we leave the number out.
What follows on the report’s own terms
The report describes a transition in which the capital-intensive answers are real but slow, and in which each carries an exposure that is not yet priced. From an operator’s seat, two things follow.
- The existing fleet keeps running. Whatever the 2035 answer turns out to be, most trucks, ships and generators will burn diesel or heavy fuel oil for years yet.
- Its cost is a problem now, not in 2035. German diesel stood at roughly EUR 2.23–2.29 per litre in early September 2026. That is a cost base, not a forecast.
Our reading, and its limits
This section is our assessment, not the report’s.
NanoEFX is a water-based treatment applied to the existing air filter. It is not a fuel additive, not an oil additive, not an ECU remap and not a retrofit — nothing is introduced into the fuel or oil systems, and no hardware is changed.
What we can show. Across 17 results — supervised trials and operator records, which we rank below them — 71% show consumption reductions between 5% and 15%, with a median of 10.7%. That is an observation across a specific set of trials. It is not a level of performance we promise. Some individual trials were weak, and some were mixed or inconclusive. The weakest is a Nigerian generator fleet, IHS Towers: a small positive median of +1.7%, too small and variable to establish a clear treatment effect for that duty cycle. Results depend on engine type, duty cycle, filter condition and correct application. We do not explain here how a coating on a filter would change combustion: that is the manufacturer’s proposed mechanism, and we have not independently measured it.
What we cannot show
We have no field validation for large marine two-stroke engines — so nothing here should be read as a heavy-fuel-oil result. On emissions, one accredited measurement by JATA in 2013, on a single vehicle, recorded lower CO, HC and NOx after treatment; we do not generalise from one vehicle to a fleet. Where fuel consumption falls, fuel-related CO₂ falls proportionally, but that is calculated from the fuel burned, not a separately measured exhaust effect.
An illustrative calculation, not a quoted price. A truck running 100,000 km a year at 30 litres per 100 km burns 30,000 litres. At a deliberately conservative 5.5% consumption reduction — below the observed median — and diesel at EUR 2.25 per litre, the saving is about EUR 3,700 per vehicle per year. Change the assumption and the number changes with it; that is the point of measuring rather than assuming.
Measure it before you believe it — including when we are the ones making the claim
- Establish a baseline first. Without one, no result means anything. Same routes, same loads, same season.
- Pilot three to five units per class, not the fleet.
- Read the result at the pump, against that baseline.
- Stop if it does not hold. A duty cycle where it does not work is a real answer, and we publish those results too.
Efficiency on the existing fleet does not replace the transition the AXA XL report describes. It runs alongside that transition, and it is available now.
Put it on three trucks and read the pump
A pilot with a defined baseline settles in one maintenance cycle what no report can.