Green Options

UPS operates nearly 100,000 ground vehicles, 600 airplanes, 3,000 facilities, and employs over 400,000 people. Although UPS has experienced over a 40% improvement in fuel economy with 50 hybrid-electric delivery vehicles, a new type of hydraulic hybrid may be even better.

UPS has been taking steps to go green for years now, but this Christmas season, they’ve taken their fuel-saving efforts to yet another level. In order to keep up with the holiday mailing demand, they continued a program that they tested out last year - using bikes to deliver packages.

Obviously, this can’t be done everywhere, but in locations with seasonally warm weather, this is an option that is saving 17 gallons of fuel per every three bikers on the road. On top of that, they’re saving money on vehicle maintenance costs and cutting down on emissions.

Editor’s note: This week we’re serving up the first ever year end best-of Gas 2.0 series with our most Dugg, most up-voted reddit, most Stumbled, and most viewed stories of 2008. As a special bonus, we’ll finish off the week by handing out the first ever (yet sure to be highly coveted) Gas 2.0 Post of the Year Award.

Ah, reddit. In many ways the cute little bugger is the forgotten genius brother to Digg, and, no matter how hard he tries, his smartness can’t seem to shine above Digg’s trophy-winning varsity jock prowess (if you hung out in the periodical room in high school, you know what I mean). But perhaps this is for the best, because what we’re left with is what civil commentary can look like on the internet when it’s dominated by graduate students, scientists, know-it-alls, and the generally reserved.

And as it turns out, all of those folks enjoy reading Gas 2.0. So, without further adieu:

Adding to its green fleet of more than 170 hybrid electric delivery vans worldwide, FedEx has decided to try out fully electric vehicles as well with a small group of 10 London-based test trucks.

FedEx has ordered 10 purpose-built zero tailpipe emissions cargo vans from UK-based electric vehicle manufacturer Modec. The new electric trucks are specifically built for the duty cycles required in stop-start city driving, can go 70 miles on one charge, and can haul up to 2 tonnes (2.2 US tons) of cargo.

So I came home from work today and saw a woman riding a bike loaded to the gills with cardboard boxes on a heavy duty bike trailer. At first I thought it was just another one of the local crazies that rides their bikes from one side of the town to the other all day long, but I’d never seen her before, and if you’ve lived in my town for as many years as I have, you get to know who our crazies are.

I watched her ride her bike around my neighborhood (it’s a small neighborhood) with a bit of a detached interest as I unloaded things from my car. She stopped every now and then, picked a package out of her clown-car-stuffed trailer and dropped it off at various neighbors’ doors.

In partnership with the US Environmental Protection Agency, UPS will begin testing a small fleet of hydraulic hybrid delivery trucks in the United States. The new vehicles can achieve 50-70% better fuel economy, a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and pay for their extra expense in less than 3 years.

UPS will field two hydraulic hybrids in Minneapolis, MN, in early 2009 and an additional five hydraulic hybrid trucks will be deployed later in 2009 and early 2010. Although this sounds like a tiny fleet, keep in mind that this is the largest scale commercial test of hydraulic hybrids ever conducted.

The UPS hybrid hydraulic truck is a standard-looking 24,000 pound package car, with an EPA-patented diesel series hydraulic hybrid drive attached to the rear axle.

For most people, shipping something quickly internationally boils down to a small bowl of alphabet soup: DHL, UPS, or FedEx. End of story. It’s just how things get done. But for an increasing number of people, they’re aware of the fact that airplane flight plays a major part in contributing to global climate change. But most only know part of the story.

In a conversation with Justin Brown of First Global Xpress, I began to find out: All the major international shippers use a “hub and spoke” system to distribute packages. In a case of bureaucracy overriding logic, a package sent from New York to Europe may first go to New Jersey, then go several miles in the wrong direction, to Memphis Tennessee, then back overseas, taking in the sights at several major and regional sorting centers until it arrives. Why? It defies logic, in terms of efficiency, ecology, and economy.

And get this: according to Justin, 30% of jet fuel consumed is during take off. So, add up those extraneous miles, plus the fuel consumed each flight, and you’ve got an enormous carbon footprint here, an unnecessary one.

What to do? Enter First Global Xpress.

How much gas money would you save if you didn’t have to make a lot of left turns?

UPS, the delivery people, decided to re-structure the delivery routes taken by drivers to eliminate as many left turns as possible. Now that may sound weird, but how long have you sat in a left turn lane waiting for oncoming traffic to pass, and how many times have you dreaded crossing into oncoming traffic?

The results have [...]

Transporting goods from point A to point B is necessary for the flow of commerce but can be heavy on CO2 emissions. Now with a little help from route-planning software trucking companies and other large delivery services can use less fuel, reduce overall emissions, and save money.

UPS has modified their package-flow technology to determine more efficient routes for delivery vehicles called Roadnet Transportation Suite. The suite can eliminate idle-heavy routes such as

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