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FedEx commits to 100% electric pickup and delivery vehicle fleet


rperez817

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FedEx Commits to Carbon-Neutral Operations by 2040

 

  • By 2025, 50% of FedEx Express global pickup and delivery (PUD) new vehicle purchases will be electric
  • By 2030, 100% of PUD new vehicle purchases will be electric
  • By 2040, entire PUD fleet will be electric, as ICE powered vehicles are retired from the fleet

 

“While we’ve made great strides in reducing our environmental impact, we have to do more. The long-term health of our industry is directly linked to the health of the planet, but this effort is about more than the bottom line – it’s the right thing to do,” said Mitch Jackson, Chief Sustainability Officer, FedEx Corp. “At FedEx, we are committed to connecting people and possibilities resourcefully and responsibly. The steps we are taking today will contribute a positive impact for generations to come.”

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8 hours ago, FR739 said:

I guess the fact the grid can’t handle this EV nonsense isn’t a concern. 

 

Utility companies including Luminant/Vistra where I live have already made plans to ensure that electrical grids can handle the growth of commercial EVs. These include Time Of Use (TOU) provisions, infrastructure upgrades in areas zoned industrial/commercial, and V2G (vehicle-to-grid). And they are working with commercial customers to help those customers plan the location of charging stations, management of fast charging, use of "smart charging" technologies, etc. 

 

Pacific Northwest National Laboratories has good information on the specific engineering issues that will need to be addressed. Influx of Electric Vehicles Accelerates Need for Grid Planning | PNNL

 

As with other aspects of the EV revolution, collaboration between business and government will be key.

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4 hours ago, rperez817 said:

 

Utility companies including Luminant/Vistra where I live have already made plans to ensure that electrical grids can handle the growth of commercial EVs. These include Time Of Use (TOU) provisions, infrastructure upgrades in areas zoned industrial/commercial, and V2G (vehicle-to-grid). And they are working with commercial customers to help those customers plan the location of charging stations, management of fast charging, use of "smart charging" technologies, etc. 

 

Pacific Northwest National Laboratories has good information on the specific engineering issues that will need to be addressed. Influx of Electric Vehicles Accelerates Need for Grid Planning | PNNL

 

As with other aspects of the EV revolution, collaboration between business and government will be key.


In areas of the country, the grid can’t handle a simple winter storm (Texas) or even high heat (southern California).  Now we want to add a bunch of novelty electric vehicles?  
 

We need many more nuke plants.  

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15 minutes ago, FR739 said:

We need many more nuke plants.  

 

I'd like for more nuclear power generation stations to be built in the U.S., but economics makes it unlikely. In Texas, Luminant planned to build 2 new reactors at Comanche Peak in 2008 but a few years later suspended the expansion indefinitely due to costs. They estimated $2,500 to $6,000 a kilowatt to build the new reactors.

 

Wind and solar combined with energy storage technologies is the way to go, and what Texas has focused on.

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16 hours ago, FR739 said:


In areas of the country, the grid can’t handle a simple winter storm (Texas) or even high heat (southern California).  Now we want to add a bunch of novelty electric vehicles? 

 

The simple fact that ERCOT completely failed and didn't weatherize their wind and solar assets to save a few bucks is lost on a lot of people. Here in NY, when you drive up route 12 into Lowville you see the wind turbines chugging along in sub-zero temps all day long and plenty of solar farms that continue to generate clean energy all winter long is the norm....ERCOT chintzed and got caught with their proverbial pants down and the citizens of Texas paid the price for it. In SoCal....a major impact on their grid has to do with wildfires burning the physical grid up, not over loading it. If the demand outstripped the load, you would be reading about it now when there are no wildfires...but there is no "overloading" of the grid due to "a bunch of novelty electric vehicles" plugged into it.

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11 hours ago, twintornados said:

 

The simple fact that ERCOT completely failed and didn't weatherize their wind and solar assets to save a few bucks is lost on a lot of people. Here in NY, when you drive up route 12 into Lowville you see the wind turbines chugging along in sub-zero temps all day long and plenty of solar farms that continue to generate clean energy all winter long is the norm....ERCOT chintzed and got caught with their proverbial pants down and the citizens of Texas paid the price for it. In SoCal....a major impact on their grid has to do with wildfires burning the physical grid up, not over loading it. If the demand outstripped the load, you would be reading about it now when there are no wildfires...but there is no "overloading" of the grid due to "a bunch of novelty electric vehicles" plugged into it.

 

The point is more the scale governments want to jump to quickly without appropriate grid investment is going to result in problems.....

 

And IIRC, the California thing can sometimes be that they shut parts down to avoid starting fires.

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On 3/4/2021 at 3:19 PM, rperez817 said:

 

I'd like for more nuclear power generation stations to be built in the U.S., but economics makes it unlikely. In Texas, Luminant planned to build 2 new reactors at Comanche Peak in 2008 but a few years later suspended the expansion indefinitely due to costs. They estimated $2,500 to $6,000 a kilowatt to build the new reactors.

 

Wind and solar combined with energy storage technologies is the way to go, and what Texas has focused on.

The economics don’t work due to the ever changing regulations and not in my back yard groups.  Approve a standardized design and site properties and quit messing with them.  Once a utility company does all the work to get a design that meets the current/projected standards, some other hurdle is thrown at them.  The companies are just being strung along.

 

Texas also added considerable backup natural gas plants.  Battery capacity was reduced considerably during the cold also.  I think the focus was primarily on being low cost.

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On 3/5/2021 at 7:35 AM, twintornados said:

 

...ERCOT chintzed and got caught with their proverbial pants down and the citizens of Texas paid the price for it. In SoCal....a major impact on their grid has to do with wildfires burning the physical grid up, not over loading it. If the demand outstripped the load, you would be reading about it now when there are no wildfires...but there is no "overloading" of the grid due to "a bunch of novelty electric vehicles" plugged into it.

Yes and no.  They paid a price now, but we’re enjoying extremely low cost energy for a long time.  A cost analysis will need to be done to determine if they came out ahead.

 

I thought California did rolling blackouts to prevent forest fires not just after the fact.  I know they have a huge surplus of electricity in spring and fall, so much so that they can’t give it away and are forced to shut down solar farms.  Seems a little wasteful to subsidize all that capacity.  

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On 3/5/2021 at 3:42 PM, rmc523 said:

 

The point is more the scale governments want to jump to quickly without appropriate grid investment is going to result in problems.....

 

And IIRC, the California thing can sometimes be that they shut parts down to avoid starting fires.

This is correct. This issue is in large part due to a failure to invest over the years in maintenance and repairs to the existing grid and substations. When they fail during summer and fall you are doing so in a tinder box, with massive wind gusts creating these large wildfires. The rolling power cuts have been done in areas PG&E has noted that they need to update the lines and systems.  

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We don't have an issue with power generation capacity. As slemke mentioned, we have way more power generating capacity than demand most of the time and all that energy usually goes to waste.

 

We don't have an issue with grid per se either on a national scale. Some local grids needs modernizing but it's not really a serious issue.

 

What we have is an issue with resiliency. Meaning the electrical system doesn't have enough slack to respond to temporary reduction in power supply. The solution to that is energy storage capacity. Without going into too much detail, utilities and municipalities across the country need to beef up on their distributed medium and long duration storage so when there are temporary reduction in supply (like shutting down transmission lines from out of state power plants to prevent wildfire), we still have enough energy in storage to power the grid until the supply disruption is over. Instead of letting excess energy go to waste during normal time, utilities should be banking that energy in storage. But they won't do it unless the regulators demands it. A few states already have energy storage targets but most states are behind on this. 

Edited by bzcat
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