Big Brown is Going Green

UPS has deployed 245 new delivery trucks powered by Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) to cities in Colorado and California, United States.

The new CNG trucks have been deployed over the past month to Denver (140) and to four cities in California: San Ramon (18), Fresno (16), West Los Angeles (59) and Ontario (12). The vehicles are part of UPS’s continued effort to reduce its emissions from the use of fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel and lower its carbon footprint.

UPS began deploying alternative fuel vehicles in the 1930s with a fleet of electric trucks that operated in New York City . Today, UPS operates one of the largest private fleets of alternative fuel vehicles in its industry, more than 1,900 in total with these additions. Since 2000, the company’s green fleet has traveled more than 165 million miles.

Bob Stoffel, UPS senior vice president of supply chain, strategy, engineering and sustainability, said that the greening of its fleet demonstrates the effectiveness of harnessing multiple technologies and applying the right vehicles to areas where they will provide the best advantage. He added that Compressed Natural Gas continues to be a sustainable technology for UPS’s fleet because natural gas is cost effective, clean-burning and abundant.

UPS, a member of the EPA Climate Leaders, first deployed CNG-powered delivery trucks in the 1980s. At the time, UPS purchased traditional gas- or diesel-driven vehicles and converted them to run on compressed gas. The 245 trucks deployed over the past month were built from scratch as CNG vehicles. They join more than 900 CNG vehicles already in use by UPS worldwide.

The CNG truck bodies are identical externally to the signature-brown trucks that comprise the UPS fleet. Marked with decals as CNG vehicles, the trucks are expected to yield a 15 percent emissions reduction over the cleanest diesel engines available in the market today. More information at: usagasvehicles.com

AT&T Plans to Deploy 8,000 NGVs

Natural gas vehicles are popular in markets around the world, with major automakers like Fiat and Volkswagen producing gaseous fuel vehicles to fit a variety of needs. Unfortunately for U.S. consumers, major automakers here have been absent from the light-duty natural gas vehicle market since the early 1990s. Today, the Honda NGX is the only production vehicle available stateside that operates on natural gas. Customers – mostly fleets operated by companies such as AT&T – opting for this alternative fuel must turn to specialty companies that can provide appropriate light-, medium-, and heavy-duty natural gas products for transit use ranging from shuttle buses and limousines to delivery vans and taxis.

AT&T announced their alternative fuel vehicle program in 2009. As part of AT&T’s program to deploy more than 15,000 alternative-fuel vehicles over the next five years – with some 8,000 of these expected to be natural gas – BAF Technologies has become a major part of this alternative fuel program.

BAF is the leading provider of natural gas vehicle systems and conversions in the United States. Recently acquired by Clean Energy Fuels (Nasdaq: CLNE), BAF is well positioned to churn out natural gas vehicles. Through AT&T, BAF is planning to convert a total of 1,850 Ford E-Series vans to compressed natural gas in 2010. This follows an initial conversion of 600 E-250 vans to natural gas as part of a 2009 contract with AT&T. BAF is also exploring additional conversions of other vehicle types, including Ford F-Series trucks, which could be made available through its national dealer network.
More information can be found at: BAFtechnologies.com and att.com

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