Emissions Reduction Efforts at the Nation’s Largest Commercial Fleet

Who’s the largest commercial fleet in the U.S.? If you guessed FedEx, UPS or Coca Cola, you’re wrong. AT&T operates 86,099 vehicles, ranking them first on the Automotive Fleet Top 300 Commercial Fleets list.

Last March, AT&T announced a major initiative to “deploy more than 15,000 alternative-fuel vehicles over the next 10 years.” AT&T’s efforts were recognized with several awards including a NAFA GreenFleet Award and a 2009 National NGV Achievement Award. Now the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) has released a study on the environmental and economic impact of their efforts. Among the key findings are that once AT&T’s program is fully implemented it will reduce emissions by nearly 32,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases per year.

These savings are significant: they are equivalent to the yearly emissions of a 3,000 vehicle fleet that travels 23,000 miles and achieves an average fuel economy of 20 miles per gallon (MPG). Given that these mileage and MPG numbers are fairly good industry benchmarks, AT&T’s efforts will probably reduce more emissions each year than the typical fleet on the bottom half of the Top 300 list.

The vehicles covered in the CAR report comprise about 17% of AT&T’s fleet. Overall theses effort will add up, by my estimation, to a 2.5% to 4% overall reduction in AT&T’s fleet emissions (holding fleet size and mileage consistent).¹

In addition to the steps covered in the CAR report, AT&T noted in an Automotive Fleet article that it was “developing an idling reduction policy and encourages drivers to heed well-known fuel-saving steps, such as avoiding fast acceleration and hard braking, keeping tires properly inflated, and reducing the weight of loads carried in fleet vehicles.”

Efficiency efforts, such as vehicle right-sizing and fuel-smart driving techniques noted above, often aren’t considered news worthy. However, they remain as vitally important to reduce emissions. In fact, given the savings that some other fleets have seen from idling reduction and getting drivers to adopt fuel-smart driving behaviors, AT&T may well find that they reduce more emissions from their efficiency efforts than their existing initiative to deploy 15,000 alternative-fuel vehicles. All of these strategies—increasing the use of lower-carbon fuels, incorporating advanced vehicles, right-sizing vehicles and improving vehicle use—are needed for a comprehensive, long-term effort to reduce fleet greenhouse gas emissions.

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¹The 2.5% assumes that the average AT&T vehicle emits 15 metric tons of greenhouse gases a year, which is the industry average according to The State of Green Business report from Greenbiz.com. The 4% assumes that AT&T’s average emissions are 9 metric tons, which would be in line with the lower quartile of our recent benchmarking effort.

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