They seem to accumulate as quickly emails, unpaid bills and grey hairs on our heads. They are kilometres and we rack them up effortlessly on the odometers of our personal vehicles.
Daily commutes, frequent errands and weekend getaways are hallmarks of the car-centric North American lifestyle. While our personal mileage seems significant, it pales in comparison to the collective distance travelled by massive commercial truck fleets.
From retailers replenishing store stock to package delivery companies, businesses with commercial fleets combust massive amounts of fuel moving goods about the continent.
The mobility challenge
In Canada, for example, transportation accounts for almost a third of the country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, according to Environment Canada (PDF).
In developed economies everywhere, transportation represents a huge opportunity when it comes to reducing GHG emissions. As we’ve said before, we believe reductions in the transportation sector can only be realized if all three aspects of emissions are addressed: fuel properties, vehicle efficiency and total demand for transportation.
In North America, there are several initiatives underway that focus on transportation fuel.
Activist campaign
One notable initiative is a joint campaign by environmental groups Forest Ethics and the Sierra Club called Future Fleet. The campaign basically involves pressuring large, well-known corporations to 'get off the fence on climate,' and, among other things, eliminate the use of fuels derived from oil sands in their trucking fleets.
The campaign seeks to vilify oil sands as a fuel source by simultaneously reaching out to individual companies and their customers. The campaign, according to its proponents, is gaining momentum.
Future of Fuels
Another initiative looking to reduce GHG emissions from transportation fuel is the BSR Future of Fuels, in which Suncor is a participant.
Future of Fuels aims to bring leading experts from the private, non-profit, public, and academic sectors together to help companies understand the sustainability impacts of their transportation fuel system and what they can do about them.
By bringing together experts with a range of perspectives and expertise, the initiative provides an authoritative resource to weigh the sustainability trade-offs of their current fuel decisions.
Achieving results
Which approach is likely to contribute more to helping achieve GHG reductions from the transportation sector? Time will tell.
Like other energy system challenges, we believe a fact-based, collaborative approach is the most effective path for trimming transportation GHG emissions. Anything less and we’re just spinning our wheels.
