Carbon savings with digital solutions.

Staying on top of your carbon output is more important than ever with the Federal Carbon tax looking like it is here to stay and the dollar per tonne of CO2 is increasing every year. This year the tax hit is $40/tonne with a rise to $50/tonne scheduled for next year and increasing every year after. It is in the best interest of Oil and Gas companies to get out ahead of the increasing carbon tax and work to reduce their carbon output.

The best way to do so? Technology and data.

The first step to calculating your carbon footprint is accurately capturing data related to your carbon producing activities. Trucking is one of those activities, and a significant one. According to a 2021 AEP study on greenhouse gas quantification a semi-truck burns on average 38.7 L of diesel per 100 km travelled. In the first five months of 2021 in PAYLOAD there has been over 3.7 million kilometers travelled by trucks, which equates to 1.4 million L of diesel burned and over 3700 tonnes of CO2 emitted. Those numbers don’t even include the emissions during loading/unloading, wait/standby, or any other time trucks are idle but running. Through analysis of data generated in PAYLOAD we know that up to 70% of a truck trip is spent stationary, which means that 3700 tonnes are likely significantly underselling total emissions. Just one of the reasons why we spend a great deal of effort working with our clients to reduce stationary/wait times. The carbon tax hit for CO2 emitted in PAYLOAD by moving trucks is almost $150,000 in the first five months of 2021. Now take those numbers and apply it to your business! How much money do you spend on carbon tax and how much could you save by cutting your wait times by even 30 minutes a run?

No business wants to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra taxes, so how can businesses harness the power of a solution like PAYLOAD to lower their carbon footprint?

Well, let us show you with some examples!

1. We provide full visibility into routes taken by drivers, including post-mortem data points such as total distance, wait time, and total elapsed time. Through analyzing the data users can make decisions that may not immediately be apparent through observation. It could be that drivers will burn less fuel and reduce their time per ticket if they go to a Receiver that is farther away but incurs less wait time. Through PAYLOAD users have access to the data that would allow them to back up that theory and put it into practice.
2. There is a push to reduce time worked per ticket with our clients. One of our clients when they came onboard had an Avg Hours Worked per ticket of 7.6 hours, in Q1 2021 it is now at 5.3 hours. That means work has become more efficient, likely due to the analysis of data provided by PAYLOAD’s solutions. We calculated the emissions reduction to have reached ~200 kg/trip. If the average annual ticket volume is 20,000 then emissions have been reduced by 4 million kilograms of CO2 compared to inception. At the current carbon cost of $40/tonne that equates to $160,000 in annual savings.
3. Volumes are another key data point in our system, including providing transparency into load utilization. While this is a complex issue it is possible with PAYLOAD’s data to identify if drivers aren’t taking the maximum amount of product, they can with every trip. Even if the effect per trip is minimal, say on average they take 5% less than what they could, if you plan for 20,000 trips per year that equates to an extra 1000 trips needed annually which means tens of thousands of extra dollars spent and hundreds of extra kilograms of CO2 emitted.

There are many more examples to share but this blog post doesn’t need to turn into a dissertation! The bottom line is that data, and specifically data generated through PAYLOAD, can help save money and increase ESG scoring by identifying ways to reduce carbon output. Find out how to get on the road to better data and better decision-making by getting in touch with us at info@payload.com, and while you are on our website take a look at our case studies and white paper.

Thanks for reading!