http://www.eco-business.com/opinion/transportation-fuel-and-climate-five-key-issues-business-leaders-and-policymakers/
[Multiple links in on-line article]
Transportation fuel and climate: Five key issues for business leaders
and policymakers
By Ryan Schuchard
Published 20 March 2014
Delta Airlines has started to use biofuels in select air routes but has
encountered a number of practical barriers in doing so, including a lack
of pipelines and hydrant system to move the biofuel. Image: Christopher
Halloran / Shutterstock.com
To address climate change, we need more creative collaboration on
transportation fuel. This was underscored in a discussion hosted by BSR
Senior Vice President Eric Olson at the recent Climate Leadership
Conference in San Diego, where a panel of practitioners discussed an
agenda for addressing climate change through modern mobility.
The panelists raised five key ideas that need more attention from
commercial fleet operators, their value chain partners, and policymakers:
Climate impacts from transportation fuel are enormous. The
combustion of transportation fuel is responsible for about 29 per cent
of US greenhouse gas emissions, and once a full lifecycle assessment is
done—which adds emissions from production and refining (the so-called
“well-to-tank” phase)—the figure for fuels is actually closer to 42 or
43 per cent, said Projal Dutta, the New York Metropolitan Transportation
Authority’s director of sustainability initiatives.
Freight drives fuel impacts. While demand for some modes of
transportation are leveling off, such as passenger vehicle miles
traveled in mature economies, such as in North America and Europe, our
increasingly connected world is relying more on commercial freight. As a
result, explained Denise Kearns, who represents the US EPA’s SmartWay
program, US emissions from commercial freight have risen 30 per cent
since 1990, and emissions are expected to grow by 20 per cent over next
20 years. These emissions are significant, as the heavy-duty trucks that
create them account for only 4 per cent of vehicles but around 25 per
cent of vehicle emissions.
To conserve fuel, we need to bring the destination to the vehicle.
Most climate enthusiasts know that the best fuel is the fuel not used,
and this “source” of fuel can be found in better driving habits,
optimized hauling practices, use of the lowest-impact modes (e.g. rail
over trucks, and trucks over air), and higher fuel economy (a key
element of US President Obama’s new plan for heavy-duty vehicles). But,
as Dutta explained, we’re missing a fundamental opportunity: We put so
much work into green buildings, but when you have to drive long
distances to those building, it negates the savings. This is easily
overlooked because studies on wasted fuel ignore miles not traveled.
Dutta proposed that the solution is not a “1950s vision of a car economy
with windmills,” but an improvement of the physical transportation
network, which could reduce emissions by up to 10 per cent.
Practical challenges create barriers to the use of new fuels. Delta
Airlines has started to use biofuels in select air routes but has
encountered a number of practical barriers in doing so, including a lack
of pipelines and hydrant system to move the biofuel (instead, the
company relies on trucks), a lack of refinery capacity for biofuels, and
insufficient availability of biofuel feedstock. Last year, Delta bought
a refinery in Pennsylvania to help better manage fuel, which constitutes
the company’s largest operating cost. Helen Howes, Delta’s managing
director of safety, health, and environment, said that while the
refinery has focused on maximizing the production of conventional “Jet
A” fuel, the company hopes that over time it will help address some of
the barriers to large-scalable, commercial use of biofuel in the
aviation sector.
We need more creative commercial collaborations. Fuel
sustainability is the kind of challenge that presents split incentives,
and individual companies—and even sectors together—lack control over the
problem. Fuel and vehicles are developed by separate companies, and the
bulk of the fuel impacts occur when they are combusted in the fleet
operations of different companies altogether. Also, as companies
transition to low-carbon fuels, they face the challenge of making
significant long-term investments in an economy that has wild technology
and policy swings.
Given these challenges, corporate fleet owners need to find ways to work
creatively with different value chain actors to create new commercial
business models for fuels, and policymakers need to help them do so
while promoting policies that improve the transportation system as a whole.
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