DALLAS — Trucking fleets face a huge challenge making decisions to balance cost pressures and increasing demands that their trucks be environmentally sustainable, according to BSR, a global nonprofit doing research on sustainable fuels.
“When it comes to commercial trucking, customers, regulators and other stakeholders all agree that in today’s climate-constrained world, we need more environmentally friendly fuels,” said a summary of BSR’s new series of reports made public May 7 during a workshop at the Alternative Clean Fuels 2015 Expo on May 7.
“But given the different demands required to solve for myriad sustainability issues — from biofuel mandates to California’s low-carbon fuel standard — fleet owners and truck operators can feel like they are being pulled in multiple directions by 550-horsepower engines.”
In the next 60 to 90 days, BSR plans to offer truckers and other businesses in the supply chain an analysis to help them make decisions on what types of trucks they should purchase, BSR Senior Vice President Eric Olson said in an interview.
Although BSR is a nonprofit, its members are among the world’s largest multinational corporations, Olson said.
BSR's most recent endeavor is intended to help large-fleet owners reduce the social and environmental impacts of commercial transportation. It released a series of fuel sustainability briefs that outline the market outlook, key social and environmental issues, and sustainability potential for five fuel categories: petroleum, natural gas, biofuels, electrification and hydrogen.
“We developed these briefs as part of a collaborative initiative among fleet owners like UPS and Wal-Mart, vehicle OEMs like Volvo North America and fuel producers such as Shell and Suncor,” the group said.
For the past three years, BSR has been developing research, tools and opportunities for dialogue to accelerate the adoption of low-carbon, sustainable fuels for commercial trucking fleets.
The latest series of BSR reports said that natural gas is expected to remain about $2 per diesel-gallon-equivalent less than diesel fuel over the next 25 years and that the infrastructure is expanding rapidly.
Switching from diesel to natural gas could reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by up to one-third from fossil sources, according to BSR.
The series of briefs also said that diesel provides more than 90% of the commercial and freight transport fuel in North America “due to energy density and multiple vehicle applications.”
Diesel also is "a leading source of emissions that cause climate change and the only fuel expected to cede share in the future,” BSR said.
