Greenhouse Gas Savings from Fuel Efficiency

In an earlier post, I introduced this graphic (from a McKinsey report that shows the estimated cost for CO₂ abatement using various technologies).*  In another post, I looked at emissions reductions in the commercial building sector.  Now we look at another big opportunity for “low hanging” emissions reductions – fuel efficiency.

National fuel costs for tractor-trailers alone come to about $25 billion a year.  And again, there are many proven techniques and technologies to cut those costs by 10-40% with little or no up-front investment.

• Fleets utilizing a greenhouse gas management program we developed with fleet management company PHH Arval have reduced fleet emissions on average by 14% and operating costs by 7%. In addition, they improved their miles per gallon an average of 16%.

• And for some truck models, hybrids are becoming more readily available and getting 30-50% increases in fuel efficiency.

• Even the simplest things can have a big impact.  We worked with US Foodservice and Sealy last year to save almost $10M in annual fleet costs just through driver training, low cost speed governors and automatic idle shutoffs.

*The vertical axis shows cost per ton of emission reductions.  And all the blocks hanging below the horizon represent things we can do now that have “negative cost” – in other words, we save more money than we spend.

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