Saving Energy over the Long Haul

Editor’s Note: This column by Chris Verner appeared in the February 14, 2010, issue of the Salisbury Post. If you wanted to help drive a "green" revolution in the trucking industry, you might not think of Walmart as a particularly attractive travel partner. The merchandising behemoth, after all, is often pilloried as a symbol of myopic fixation on bottom-line profits, to the detriment of local economies, low-wage employees and the environment. Worries about Walmart are so pervasive, it has spawned its own gimlet-eyed monitoring group, Walmart Watch, devoted to battling the company's "unchecked growth and negative impact on our society." When energy expert Amory Lovins looks at Walmart, he sees those issues. He also sees opportunity. As co-founder and chairman of the Rocky Mountain Institute, Lovins (who will speak at Catawba College on Feb. 23) thinks that adopting more efficient technologies is the cheapest, most practical way to alleviate the nation's energy problems, and he is convinced corporate America will blaze the path. RMI, a non-profit "think and do" tank based in Colorado, has partnered with more than 80 Fortune 500 companies to develop real-world solutions to energy issues. As for why green-leaning RMI would hitch a ride with smudgy Walmart, the answer goes back to Willie Sutton's explanation for why he robbed banks. Just as banks hold wads of cash, Walmart represents fistfuls of potential fuel savings. The company operates approximately 7,200 semis, which roll up roughly 900 million miles per year making deliveries to Walmart's U.S. stores. When the RMI-Walmart project began in 2006, the fleet averaged about 6 miles per gallon. At Walmart's scale, even incremental improvements mean big savings. Depending on the price of fuel, adding just one extra mile per gallon can save the company between $35 million and $50 million a year. Walmart has already done better than that. The company met its goal of improving fuel efficiency by 25 percent and is on track to boost average mileage to 16-18 miles per gallon by 2015, at a savings of up to $500 million annually. That's good for the environment as well as the bottom line. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that doubling Walmart's fuel efficiency will cut more than 690,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year. (That's the equivalent of idling a coal-burning power plant like Duke's Buck Steam Station for five or so months a year.) Improvements have come through a phalanx of strategies and technologies that are being adopted throughout the truck manufacturing and freight hauling industry. Aerodynamic improvements reduce the wind resistance of tractors and trailers, meaning less power is needed to maintain cruising speeds. Auxiliary power systems (either on-board or plug-in stations) allow drivers to shut off their engines during layovers, cutting down idling time. Improvements in tire technology and engine-management systems have yielded gains, just as in passenger vehicles. Computerization and GPS tracking systems facilitate logistical improvements. And, yes, hybrid tractor-trailers are on the horizon, too. You can see evidence of this burgeoning big-rig revolution in Rowan County. Freightliner's Class 8 Cascadia truck, assembled at its Cleveland plant and at a new plant in Mexico, is billed as a model of aerodynamic efficiency, the result of 2,500 hours of wind-tunnel testing. Last month, Freightliner's parent company, Daimler-Benz, received nearly $40 million in federal funding to speed future truck efficiency improvements. The funding, administered through the Department of Energy's 21st Century Truck Technology Partnership, will be shared with Daimler subsidiaries and other partners to engineer new prototypes. Food Lion is participating in the Smartway Transport program, another EPA initiative to improve truck and freight hauling efficiency. Just south of Salisbury, truck drivers can look forward to shutting off their engines and plugging in to the Derrick Travel Plaza electrification program to keep their cabins comfortable and onboard systems powered up while cutting fuel consumption and emissions. Consider the scope of the $660 billion a year U.S. trucking industry, and you see why industrialists and environmentalists alike are taking notice. All told, combination trucks — or tractor-trailers — rolled up 143.5 billion miles in 2008, down slightly from the previous year because of the economy. That represents roughly 15 percent of total U.S. oil consumption — and a transportation sector ripe for impressive savings. While regulatory necessity will spur some of this revolution, Lovins believes the carrot of profitability ultimately is a more powerful engine for transformation than the stick of emissions restrictions and fuel-mileage mandates. That could be particularly important for an industry that has been walloped by the recession, with more than 2,500 owner-operators going out of business in 2008. Over the long haul, saving fuel is cheaper than buying fuel. "Smart companies have figured this out," Lovins says. Whatever else Walmart may be guilty of, you don't become the world's largest retailer through stupidity.