Our Featured Project
Project Description: Cascade Sierra Solutions Trucking Efficiency Project
Nearly everything we use today – from food to furniture – spends some of its journey on a truck. Long-haul truckers, like Keddy & Sonya (left) - with their trusted diesel rigs - 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.
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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 offset the emissions from your own driving or other energy-use with this project, you can help American truckers increase their fuel efficiency. This partnership helps make Efficiency real – one of the 7 major strategies identified to reduce US greenhouse gases right now.
How does your partnership in this work? 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.
Wal-Mart, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and other members of the EPA SmartWaysm program are up-fitting their company fleets, to save money and emissions. Locally-owned, owner-operator trucking firms struggle to find the capital for the the auxiliary power units (APUs), the single wide tires and even the time off-the-road to modify their rigs. Like the big manufacturers, these truckers know that these upgrades create major environmental benefits and cost savings, but finding the cash or the time to research the products, equipment modifiers and government assistance is a huge hurdle when you’re driving nine hours a day. High gas prices only make it tougher. As Keddy says, “Without CSS, the average working guy could never afford this stuff”. And without your purchase of these offsets, neither CSS nor these truckers could readily afford to make these actions happen.
“Without CSS, the average working guy could never afford this stuff”. And without your purchase of these offsets, neither CSS nor these truckers could readily afford to make these actions happen.
How does it work? The combustion of diesel fuel creates carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Reducing such combustion reduces greenhouse gases. 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.
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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.
Offset Type: Forward Stream “Help Build” offsets for the life of the trucks, which average 1.5 million lifetime miles.
Verification/Monitoring: Performance data is monitored, primarily through GPS tracking of a statistically critical sampling of the trucks, with GPS data supplemented by U.S. Government and industry statistics for average truck use.
Additionality: This project demonstrates financial additionality according to IPCC definitions in that the implementation faces one or more barriers that are overcome by the carbon revenues. The principal barriers are capital cost of equipment, lack of access to that equipment, and lack of affordable financing. Carbon funding – from your purchase - enables CSS to provide low-cost financing to fund the installation of the efficiency measures while continuing to sustain its own operations bringing that equipment to its clients.
Sustainable Development Benefits: This project’s contributions to sustainable development include: reducing the consumption of finite energy sources, minimizing the adverse impacts on health from air pollution, reducing the impacts of greenhouse gases to combat global climate change, and helping locally owned, independent, American truckers maintain their livelihoods in an ever more competitive environment.