CEP Senior Project Presentation
- 1. Green My Fleet: An Analysis of Puget Sound Clean Air’s Evergreen Fleets Initiative of Green Fleet Modernization David Perlmutter Community, Environment, and Planning (CEP) Department of Urban Design & Planning University of Washington May 6, 2010 http://greenmyfleet.blogspot.com/
- 2. Introduction
- 3. Why Evergreen Fleets? Previous working relationship with the City of Issaquah LOTS of federal stimulus funding Very cutting-edge research Lack of industry funding/staff to get a sense of “big picture” solutions Reforming large fleets can have a major impact in changing our transportation options as consumers
- 5. My Research
- 6. My Role Create a series of Best Practices documents for the City of Issaquah committing the City to reducing their emissions and making investments in alternative fuels Prepare an analytical report for Evergreen Fleets detailing what next steps can be taken in order to: Update the range of Best Practices available to candidate fleets to fit the “industry standard” Improve the process of importing quantitative data into Evergreen Fleets’ online Evaluator Tool
- 7. Stakeholder Analysis Evergreen Fleets (Puget Sound Clean Air) Puget Sound Clean Cities Coalition (US Dept. of Energy) Candidate Agencies/Cities Resource Conservation Offices City Fleet Depts. Vehicle Suppliers Carbon Exchange Markets (cap-and-trade, carbon neutrality agreements) State legislatures Venture capitalists
- 8. Best Practices are documents that demonstrate a candidate city’s commitment to alternative fuels investment. I have worked on creating several of these official documents for the City of Issaquah, including: Green Fleets Plan Green Vehicle Purchasing Policy “ Right Size” Requirement for Vehicle Purchasing Preventive Maintenance Reduce, Reuse, Recover (RRR) Program for Vehicle Maintenance Products Green Rental Car or Car-Sharing Agreements Best Practices: City of Issaquah
- 10. New Qualitative Methods Interviews Chris Wiley, City of Seattle Green Fleets Coordinator Stephanie Meyn, PS Clean Air (Evergreen Fleets) Ivan Miller, PSRC Jason Edens, City of Seattle Sustainable Purchasing Blogging – www.greenmyfleet.blogspot.com
- 11. New Technological Partnerships Green Taxi Cabs “ Cab-sharing” CNG taxi cabs
- 12. New Technological Partnerships Electric Vehicles Greater availability – Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf Insufficient charging network
- 14. Where do electric cars get their energy from?
- 16. Lifecycle Emissions Analysis Important to look at the net effects of producing alternative fuels Corn-based ethanol and soy-based biodiesel may do more harm than traditional gasoline
- 17. New Technological Partnerships – Bicycles as a Fleet Component
- 19. New Best Practices: Encouraging Density, Walkability as a Means of Emissions Reduction Evergreen Fleets already encourages cities to use “green” car-sharing services – why not discourage the need for cars altogether?
- 20. Recommendations/Conclusion: Improved data management mechanisms Improved inter-agency communication – social networking tool to create a community of Green Fleets managers Commute Trip Reduction Better analysis of “the Industry Standard” of Best Practices New technological partnerships
- 21. Thank you for your time. Questions?
Editor's Notes
- #3: Many municipalities and other agencies wish to reduce their fleet emissions due to rising fuel prices, global warming, and increased federal funding for alternative fuel vehicles and technology Evergreen Fleets is a certification program run by the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency that awards certification to fleets demonstrating emissions reductions and investment in alternative fuel technologies
- #4: Lots of local participation (Starbucks, City of Seattle, UW, Port of Seattle, Boeing, King Co, cities around the region ARRA (stimulus funding) - $15 million to Puget Sound Clean Cities Coalition alone Most research is very current, constantly changing information – chance to get in on this field while it’s still hot
- #6: My research question is: what is the best way for large public and private fleets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and achieve Green Fleets certification? More importantly, what changes are needed in similar certification programs to 1) improve their effectiveness in reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG); and 2) invest in alternative fuel technology to achieve this end?
- #8: Evergreen Fleets is a very small pilot project administered by two (2) staff persons at Puget Sound Clean Air. The amount of success they’ve had with this project already is staggering given their limited resources. Puget Sound Clean Cities Coalition is a federal incentive program run by the US Dept. of Energy to encourage fleets across the country to reduce emissions, though these programs are voluntary incentives (through grants), broken up by metro areas RCO’s also called sustainability or environment offices in larger cities, sometimes done through public utility departments or engineering/public works in smaller cities. In some cases, just a city manager Fleets are people who actually make this happen, put policy into action. 10 years ago “sustainability” was very controversial application to fleets, now at least locally most fleet managers are on board because of greater federal incentives of funding, tech, environmental PR, cost savings Carbon exchange markets important because they provide stronger enforcement mechanism for reducing emissions, like Chicago Climate Exchange or carbon neutrality agreements in Madrid, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Sweden VCs are important because you must convince them a new technology is worthwhile before they will give you funding. Getting it actually off the ground is another story because often investors don’t come through, rich people change their minds
- #9: Green Fleets Plan is important because cities must set benchmarks for themselves if they’re going to be successful. Part of the reason Seattle has been so successful is that it’s been setting GF goals for itself since at least 1999, plan was officially released in 2003. First plan called for cutting the city’s emissions by 7% below 1990 levels by 2012, which it achieved ahead of schedule in 2007. They’re now trying to go “carbon neutral” by 2030, although there are many doubts over whether this is even possible Vehicle purchasing is very important because there must be a market for green fuels and green vehicles for these changes to be implemented. Part of the advantage in working with fleets is their very size changes the marketplace. If the City of Chicago or Seattle decides it wants a new vehicle, like the Nissan Leaf for instance, its demand will probably be in the hundreds of new vehicles, which helps to drive the price down and make it a more affordable model overall. “ Right size” requirement – are you using the correct sized vehicle for the job? Fuel consumption, vehicle use tracking – one of the major problems I ran into with the City of Issaquah, that they didn’t have information on VMT by drivers, often times fuel consumption info was incomplete or just inaccurate. Fuel-efficient driving – driver behavior (idling, frequent braking or acceleration) can impact fuel efficiency of any model up to 30% Preventive maintenance – look at fleets from a holistic perspective – not just vehicles but their maintenance – where do these products come from, what is their composition and environmental impacts, how are they purchased and disposed of? City of Seattle’s social equity element of this policy Diesel vehicle retrofits – most of City of Seattle’s cuts in emissions come from fully retrofitting about 500 diesel vehicles with retrofit technology – these technologies can cut emissions by 50-80% and even make diesel a cleaner burning fuel than petroleum gasoline. Green car-sharing can promote healthy, walkable urban design in addition to cutting VMT and emissions
- #17: Describe how biodiesel from corn or soy is out, waste vegetable oil biodiesel is in, just don’t tell Evergreen Fleets
- #20: Cut emissions through dense, walkable urban design Tesla roadster Carbon neutrality – is it the future?
- #21: See exercise 5, don’t wanna bore people to death Most cities don’t have BPs, give them a grace period to develop templates Organizational disconnect – EF is out of touch with many technological improvements. There is a danger that cities’ progress will supersede the EF standards and make the entire certification program look like a joke. Create a “facebook” or social network agent for fleet managers