By Edwin Black
In the absence of a government-launched Manhattan Project to ignite the alternative fuel revolution, the public must turn not just to the White House or the state house but also to the largest fleet owners in the country.
Carmakers are waiting for only one thing before they shift their considerable resources away from gasoline cars and trucks and toward hydrogen, electric, natural gas or other alternatively fueled vehicles. These companies want tangible demand. Government, commercial and private vehicle fleets have the compelling volume purchasing power no automaker can ignore.
For-hire carriers in 2004 operated 675,000 trucks; the top 10 include UPS, FedEx and Yellow Roadway. UPS alone deploys some 80,000 brown trucks daily to make 13 million deliveries. Only about 1,000 of the company's massive fleet ran on natural gas as of this summer. Fewer than 100 of FedEx's 30,000 medium-duty trucks were hybrid diesel.
Some 6 million additional vehicles belong to private commercial fleets, such as those operated by Sysco, Wal-Mart, Halliburton and Frito-Lay. Wal-Mart alone operates 3,300 trucks that in 2005 drove 455 million miles to make 900,000 deliveries. Verizon operated 70,000 trucks and cars in 2004. City, state and federal agencies, as well as universities, also operate some of America's 38,000 private fleets.
Today, alternative fuel vehicles are ready, or fast becoming ready, to roll out en masse. If fleet managers adopted a Green Fleet Initiative that put the purchase of hydrogen cars first, fully electric cars second and natural gas cars third, the race would be on among truck and heavy-vehicle manufacturers to be the first to fulfill those orders. Volume purchasing would multiply and accelerate the technology, bring down costs and migrate such vehicles swiftly from commercial fleets to average consumers.
Environmentally conscious consumers, public agencies and companies would be able to ship green, shop green, drink green and even communicate green. For example, in choosing an overnight shipper, will it be FedEx or UPS? In buying soda, will it be Coke or Pepsi? In setting up cell phone service, Verizon or Cingular?
Corporate policies on discrimination, labor and pollution, among others, already are determining factors for many in choosing where to take their business. Why not the extent to which companies or agencies deploy green vehicles?
Ironically, the federal government itself maintains America's single-largest fleet by far -- some 600,000 vehicles -- and environmental groups have had to file suit to compel it to follow its own alternative fuel guidelines. The Energy Policy Act, passed after the first Gulf War to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil, mandates that 75 percent of new vehicles purchased by federal agencies use alternative fuels. The law has been totally ignored. A steady cascade of court rulings has rejected government requests for delays. Government purchases alone could spur the rapid adoption of alternative fuel vehicles.
Governments and regimes since the time of the timber-hoarding pharaohs have refused to embrace public policies that exercise sane stewardship over energy and those who control it.
Many believe the notion that man inherited the Earth, but that is not so. He only holds it as a precious legacy for succeeding generations.
That inheritance must not be squandered or reduced to rubble because of the war or ecocidal damage that arises from the intoxicating but toxic fumes of internal combustion.