The New Logistics: Electrifying Freight With Microgrids
CleanTechnica is proud to present our newest industry report about the electrification of heavy transport, The New Logistics: Electrifying Freight With Microgrids.
Executive Summary
For the big firms which operate hundreds or thousands of logistics depots or truck stops in the United States, electrification of road freight is a path to expanding market share and greater profits.
The United States faces a significant challenge in decarbonizing its transportation sector, which accounts for over a third of national greenhouse gas emissions and substantial air pollution. Among freight transportation options, road freight has the conditions for success to decarbonize using electric trucks.
That battery-electric trucks will dominate over alternatives is a foregone conclusion. Big customers and affluent states are demanding green freight. Rail, which won’t electrify for decades, is losing coal revenue and will be paying more for energy. Domestic ship freight is strangled by the Jones Act and the lack of domestic ship building. Trucks are already lower emissions than rail in eight states and counting.
Battery energy densities keep climbing and battery costs keep dropping, so weight and capital cost concerns are going away. Battery-electric drivetrains are more reliable and efficient, so operational costs for maintenance and energy are lower than for alternatives. The cost competition with rail and water is changing, and autonomous solutions are coming that will change it further. Freight transportation will increasingly move to highways in the next two decades.
The biggest challenge right now is reliably getting clean electricity into trucks, and the answer is grid-connected microgrids with solar and batteries that can be modularized and incrementally scaled for truck depots and stops.
The truck electrification strategy lays out the following seven self-reinforcing actions that collectively overcome challenges related to charging microgrids and enable firms building and adopting them to profit and expand.
- Design charging microgrids incrementally for scalability
- Take advantage of pricing flexibility to gain a market edge
- Focus on charging, not hypothetical benefits
- Lean into modularity to get big things done
- Focus on common solutions to enhance charging deployment
- Target corridors with strong GDP and climate goals
- Ensure charging success through stakeholder leadership
Big firms with hundreds or thousands of depots or truck stops and the turn-key vendors that build them that follow this strategy will win out over firms that don’t or can’t do this.
Download The New Logistics: Electrifying Freight With Microgrids.