UPS fueling Jackson fleet with renewable gas
UPS is making strides to power its Jackson fleet with renewable natural gas.
According to Susan Rosenberg, UPS public relations director, the renewable natural gas will come from landfill waste.
Currently, UPS is using liquified natural gas to fuel its large tractor-trailers, Rosenberg said.
"We have a variety of natural gas — compressed, liquified, propane — and now we’re expanding, looking at renewable," she said.
To fuel its efforts, in 2014 UPS built a natural gas fueling station for liquified natural gas in Jackson. There's also a fueling station in Memphis so trucks can go from "hub to hub," Rosenberg said.
"Jackson is an important UPS location that is part of what we call a rolling laboratory for testing various equipment and fuel," she said.
Referencing the new fueling station, Rosenberg said, "This fuel is used for the tractors in the big rigs that pull trailers. Last week’s announcement expands our use of renewable natural gas (RNG) for some of the heavy duty trucks."
She added, "Our UPS alternative fuel and advanced technology fleet includes more than 6,430 all-electric, hybrid electric, natural gas, renewable fuels, biomethane and light-weight fuel-saving composite body vehicles. Our rolling laboratory approach provides the real-world bridge between research and commercialization and allows UPS to scale up the right solutions for the driving and delivery circumstances. This will conserve fuel, reduce emissions and sustain UPS operating efficiency and service."
In a news release, Mark Wallace, UPS senior vice president of global engineering and sustainability, said the company was committed to using renewable and alternative fuels.
“UPS operates one of the most diversified fleets in private industry today, and renewable natural gas is a critical part of our strategy to expand our fuel sources and minimize the environmental impact associated with growing customer demand,” Wallace said. “We are using methane that otherwise would be released into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas emission and converting it to power our trucks while helping to promote the use of this renewable fuel in transportation.”
The RNG will fuel more than 140 heavy duty trucks in Memphis and Jackson, part of UPS’s natural gas fleet, which includes more than 3,800 medium and heavy duty vehicles worldwide, according to the release. RNG, also known as biomethane, can be derived from many abundant and renewable sources, including decomposing organic waste in landfills, wastewater treatment and agriculture. It is then distributed through the natural gas pipeline system, making it available for use as liquefied natural gas (LNG) or compressed natural gas (CNG).
In 2014, 5.4 percent of total gas and diesel purchased by UPS was displaced by using alternative fuels.
UPS has a goal to reach a billion miles traveled by this advanced fleet by 2017, Rosenberg said.
Last year, she said, UPS logged more than 154 million miles in vehicles with alternative fuels, an almost threefold increase from 2013.
"It’s a sustainability goal," Rosenberg said. "When you're burning fossil fuels there are greenhouse gas emissions. UPS looks at our fleet operations, how we power our vehicles; we balance and measure what can we do that will have environmental benefits with efficient operations and the ability to provide service. That’s why you don’t have all one type of fueling. You look at what are the delivery characteristics for the vehicle in that local area."
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