GHD Releases The Shift: Accelerating Your Fleet Decarbonization Journey

Features GHD ZEVO^™(Zero Emission Vehicle Optimization) Platform to Analyze and Guide Decarbonization Strategy, Costs and Benefits

Building on its extensive transportation sector work, GHD, a leading global professional services firm, has released The Shift: Accelerating your fleet decarbonization journey. The Shift provides an actionable roadmap for reducing carbon emissions in the transport sector, featuring expert guidance and insights to support the fleet decarbonization process across a broad range of public and private sectors.

The transport sector, a large proportion of which are fleet vehicles, contributes as much as 30 percent of all greenhouse gases in Canada and the United States. As a result, fleet decarbonization, through various alternative fuel solutions can provide an economically and logistically feasible pathway to improve the environment and combat climate change as Canada and the USA progress toward 2050 net-zero goals.

The Shift highlights GHD’s experience and expertise that can lead businesses and municipalities through a successful decarbonization journey that minimizes the risk of the transition while maximizing its benefits. A key component of any fleet decarbonization project is to analyze data that maximizes operational efficiency. GHD’s ZEVO is a proprietary platform developed for fleet operators to analyze and understand the complexities of a vehicle fleet transition to zero emissions. The basic principle of ZEVO is to transform fleet and operational data into various decarbonization timeline scenarios allowing the fleet owner to implement its decarbonization strategy.

“As Canada and the USA work towards reducing carbon emissions, fleet decarbonization represents meaningful health and economic opportunities when total ownership costs are considered,” said Rippan Bhattacharjee, GHD Fleet Decarbonization Leader, who developed ZEVO with a team of in-house specialists.  “Guided by our ZEVO tool, we help fleet owners implement forward-thinking, practical technology-driven solutions to accelerate their decarbonization outcomes while mitigating the risks.”

While ZEVO enables the upfront feasibility assessment for any fleet transition, lengthy and complex processes present challenges to a successful transition. To address those challenges, The Shift outlines a comprehensive four-phased approach that draws on ZEVO’s analytical toolset to optimize any fleet transition project, regardless of fleet type, fuel type or industry, and includes everything from mining to agricultural vehicles to last-mile delivery vans. The phases are Planning, Real-World Testing, Implementation Planning and Optimization and Sustainment.

Planning involves a careful and thoughtful planning phase to ensure a solid foundation for a successful fleet transition. This phase involves defining goals and ambitions, conducting robust feasibility studies, and accurate life-cycle assessments of the new fleet.

Real-World Testing with a few pilot vehicles will provide valuable insights and validate the feasibility studies and life-cycle analysis to ensure the chosen vehicle is suited to the unique operating environments where the fleet will operate.

Implementation planning is the detailed design, engineering, and planning phase, which includes applying for government funds, exploring public and private sources of capital, securing permits to construct new depots, along with fueling and charging infrastructure.

Optimization and sustainment is the final phase in the fleet transition. This phase involves optimizing operational strategies for the new fleet to take advantage of the unique strengths the new fleet has and to minimize any weaknesses. Managing changes in operations and maintenance and designing new standard operating procedures and schedules for the fleet will be critical in this phase.

“Transitioning to a decarbonized fleet is a multifaceted journey with many essential pitstops. Having a comprehensive roadmap can help to ensure the pivot is successful,” added Bhattacharjee. “In addition to the long-term financial benefits, importantly there are health benefits as well, with a recent study showing fewer asthma-related Emergency Room visits with more zero-emission vehicles on the road.”

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