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Cascade Sierra Solutions Trucking Efficiency Project

Cascade Sierra Solutions Trucking Efficiency Project

Nearly everything we use today spends some of its journey on a truck.  Long-haul truckers, like Keddy & Sonya (left) deliver our goods where neither rail systems nor ships can go.  They put in long hours, log thousands of miles, and, unfortunately, generate tons of CO2 and other polluting emissions.  Like you, they don’t like that last part. They love blue skies, wide open spaces, and the great outdoors. And the locally-owned, owner-operator drivers in particular, just like family farmers, do their best to build a livelihood against the challenges of nature, weather, and rising energy costs.  Sometimes it’s a hard road. 

You can help lighten their load, and they in turn can help you to reduce your impact on our planet.  When you purchase our truck-efficiency carbon offsets, your funding helps Cascade Sierra Solutions (CSS), an Oregon-based non-profit, provide the education and outreach directly to owner-operators. CSS serves its clients with energy-efficient products, regulatory advice, installation contracting and coordination, and below-market financing, which enable these long-haul truckers to cut their costs and their CO2.  Your purchase brings critical support to Cascade Sierra’s work, and it also extends reduced retrofit costs to the truckers, so that they in turn can reduce emissions on your behalf that would not happen otherwise.

This first trucking carbon offset project results from the grouping of several different customized energy efficiency measures applied to long-haul, heavy-duty diesel trucks from a locally-owned fleet, through the operations of Cascade Sierra Solutions. These measures reduce the consumption of diesel fuel through reductions in weight, aerodynamic drag, tire rolling resistance, and fuel consumption while idling.  

Typically, long-haul drivers must idle their engines to provide livable cab temperatures while they sleep. APUs and other idle reduction technologies provide alternative power sources for climate control while using a small fraction of the fuel the main engine would otherwise consume idling, or in some cases, none at all. These measures reduce the amount of diesel fuel combustion necessary to operate the truck over a fixed distance.  

Depending on the specific measures installed, most trucks will save between 10 and 60 short tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the environment each year. That is equivalent to converting 5-25 average cars to hybrids!  A critical sample of the trucks in this project will be using GPS tracking to collect driving distance data for reporting.  With these data and conservative calculations of the fuel savings from the measures installed, NativeEnergy is able to track and verify the amount of tons of carbon credits generated from the trucks.  NativeEnergy does not include in its calculation any fuel savings from measure when used in states requiring, or effectively requiring, the implementation of such measure.