To align your freight sustainability efforts with your business objectives, it is critical to view sustainability as a journey — a Green Freight journey. You need to take the time to assess your supply chain, setting goals, taking action, measuring results, scaling good ideas and then doing it all over again. Continuous improvement is key, too.
Success over the long run will require an ability to think in three different timescales. In the short term, you’ll be concentrating on efficiencies of systems, aiming for fuller truckloads and use of multimodal transportation. In the medium term, you’ll be looking to use higher-efficiency, conventionally fueled trucks and other equipment. In the long term, you’ll need to be looking toward cleaner, low-carbon fuel. The crucial element in your strategy is to keep watch on short-term opportunities, while always playing the longer Green Freight game.
2015 will present opportunities to make progress on these medium- and longer-term objectives. The upcoming heavy-truck fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas standards offer a chance to put a plan in place that will require a new generation of freight trucks with lower lifecycle costs, improved reliability and significantly reduced emissions. Fleets and shippers that are using natural gas trucks will continue to have opportunities to weigh in with suppliers and with regulators on the need for reduction of emissions of methane — a global warming gas that is much more powerful than carbon dioxide. That, in turn, will move us closer to the day when natural gas trucks can deliver clear climate emission benefits over diesel trucks.
To accelerate change, you can’t work alone, but in tandem with your partners up and down the supply chain. It’s time to speak up on these issues.
Jason Mathers, Senior Manager, Supply Chain Logistics, Environmental Defense Fund