Jennifer Symoun:
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you to the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Jennifer Symoun and I will moderate today's seminar. Today's topic is Strategies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Freight Transportation. Please be advised that today's seminar is being recorded.
Today we'll have three presenters, Cheryl Bynum of the US Environmental Protection Agency, Chris Frey of North Carolina State University, and Steve Winkelman of the Center for Clean Air Policy. In addition, Ed Strocko of the FHWA Office of Freight Management and Operations will be giving a brief update on the PNRS Rulemaking.
Cheryl L. Bynum is a senior program analyst for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She has worked for the EPA since the early 1990's. Prior to joining EPA, Ms Bynum worked in the transportation industry. Cheryl Bynum has a key leadership role in technology verification for the Agency's innovative partnership with the freight industry, SmartWay™ Transport Partnership. Her current interest is to develop test protocols to quantify the fuel and emissions benefits of emerging technologies for commercial trucks. Developing test protocols that simulate "real world" conditions will help accelerate deployment of cleaner, more efficient freight transport. Ms Bynum is a graduate of the University of Michigan, and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
H. Christopher Frey is a professor of environmental engineering in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University. He teaches graduate courses on air pollution control, air quality, and risk analysis that are available via distance education. He has conducted research on measurement and modeling of real world vehicle activity, energy use, and emissions since joining NC State in 1994. Recent projects include the use of portable emissions measurement systems to quantify real-world emissions of onroad light duty gasoline vehicles, heavy duty diesel vehicles, and nonroad construction vehicles, as well as development of methodologies for empirical and physically-based modeling of fuel use and emissions. Some of these projects have included comparison of biodiesel versus petroleum diesel based on in-use measurements and life cycle inventory modeling. In addition to recently completing a project on identification of potential best practices for reduction of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in freight transportation, Dr. Frey is collaborating with a major truck manufacturer and two truck fleets to evaluate the effectiveness of auxiliary power units as means for reducing fuel use and emissions associated with extended idling of long-haul trucks.
Dr. Frey has served in numerous national and international advisory capacities, including contributing as a lead author to the 2006 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories. Dr. Frey is the immediate past president of the Society for Risk Analysis, the faculty advisor of the NC State student chapter of the Air & Waste Management Association, and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Virginia, and from Carnegie Mellon both a masters in mechanical engineering and a PhD in Engineering and Public Policy.
Steve Winkelman, the Manager of Transportation at the Center for Clean Air Policy, has 15 years of technical and policy experience in the transportation, energy and environmental fields. With training in physics, policy analysis and planning, he brings a unique interdisciplinary approach to his work. Steve provides technical and policy assistance to government officials and key stakeholders at the local, state, national and international levels in designing transportation greenhouse emissions reduction policies and quantifying their impacts. Recent areas of focus include passenger vehicle technologies, smart growth use planning, freight emissions and emissions trading. Steve recently launched CCAP's new Urban Leaders Initiative on Infrastructure and Climate Change which is helping cities and counties adapt to the projected impacts of global climate change. Prior to joining the Center, Steve managed ICF Kaiser's Climate Wise work for the US EPA. At Argonne National Laboratory he designed, constructed and tested a laboratory-scale magnetically levitated vehicle (maglev). Steve holds a BS in Physics from the University of Michigan, and an MA in Public Policy from the University of Minnesota. http://www.ccap.org/trans.htm
I'd now like to go over a few logistical details prior to starting the seminar. Today's seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the smaller text box underneath the chat area on the lower right side of your screen. Please make sure you are typing in the thin text box and not the large white area. Please also make sure you send your question to "Everyone" and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. Once we get through all of the questions that have been typed in, the Operator will give you instructions on how to ask a question over the phone. If you think of a question after the seminar, you can send it to the presenters directly, or I encourage you to use the Freight Planning LISTSERV. The LISTSERV is an email list and is a great forum for the distribution of information and a place where you can post questions to find out what other subscribers have learned in the area of Freight Planning. If you have not already joined the LISTSERV, the web address at which you can register is provided on the slide on your screen.
Finally, I would like to remind you that this session is being recorded. A file containing the audio and the visual portion of this seminar will be posted to the Talking Freight Web site within the next week. We encourage you to direct others in your office that may have not been able to attend this seminar to access the recorded seminar.
The PowerPoint presentations used during the seminar will also be available within the next week. I will notify all attendees of the availability of the PowerPoints, the recording, and a transcript of this seminar.
We're now going to go ahead and get started. Today's topic, for those of you who just joined us, Strategies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Freight Transportation. However, before we get started on that topic, Ed Strocko of the FHWA Office of Freight Management and Operations is going to give a brief update on the PNRS Rulemaking status.
Ed Strocko:
Thank you Jennifer. I want to spend a few minutes talking about rule making on this program, we are reopening it. Section 1301 of SAFETEA-LU, projects of national and regional significance, for the efficient movement of people, goods throughout the U.S. and improve the health and welfare of the national economy. The Secretary of Transportation, to issue regulations to establish the evaluation and rate ling guidelines for selecting proposed projects.
In the late summer the Federal Highway Administration published a notice of rule making for the program. After the close of original comment period of what performed -- a number of subject areas were not commented on, stake holders didn't respond. Made the decision to reopen for additional time. We feel the reopening of the NPRM will help us receive the most comments from the broadest group of stakeholders. We would those interesting in commenting may not have had the opportunity during the original comment period, reopen until February 9, 2007. We think this additional time will allow additional parties to review discussion of the proposed regulations and allow submission to complete response. Steel bridges will have the map addresses the rating -- project proposals. Specifically seeking input on these. Also interested in 500ing out, using map m to provide specific comment to qualify quantitative cages -- full funding granting agreement.
We note rule making process does not apply to projects currently -- SAFETEA-LU. All authorized are fully allocated to the 25 projects, no funds available for distribution beyond these projects.
The freight -- fund available in the future.
The NPRM and comment form can be found at www.regulations.gov.
As I mentioned, the comment period for this proposed rule making will close on February 92007. We will accept late comments to the extent practicable. If you have questions, please see our website at www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight or contact myself at 202-366-2997 or ed.strocko@dot.gov. Thank you and we hope you will provide comments during this rule making.
J. Symoun:
Ed's contact information is on the screen, and I will bring it back up at the end of all the presentations. The introduction slide will have all the presenter's emails addresses.
We will now turn to the topic for today's seminar, Strategies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Freight Transportation. Our first presenter is Cheryl Bynum of the US Environmental Protection Agency. As a reminder, if you have questions for Cheryl, please type them into the chat box and they will be answered in the last 30 minutes of the seminar.
Cheryl Bynum
Thank you for joining us today. I will talk about the SmartWay Transport Partnership. Designation are the cleanest and efficient options. For passenger vehicles we have the SmartWay designation for vehicles, the website on the screen. We're plan planning a similar designation for -- have a partnership that, for SmartWay, a commitment by partners to conserve fuel and reduce emissions. As you can see, it's free to join, anyone can join any size from mom and pop owner operator to the largest trucking fleets in the United States. Companies join, the next slide shows railroads have joined, all the Class 1, a affiliate partners, truck stop associations, other organization whose goal is to promote partnership and educate the public and commercial partners about its exist existence.
This is what we accomplished in the three years we have been in existence. How does it work? We reduce emissions, improve air quality, reduce CO2, and has direct impact on the nation's --
Why would companies like to join, they want to know the environmental footprint. Rail companies like to join, improves public image, able to track emission s and reduce fuel consumption. Affiliates enjoy tools for membership, public recognition for taking those steps. We developed a model called freight logistics, energy tracking, fleet performance model. This quantifies the benefits for carriers, things they can do, adopting the fleet, to improve the effectiveness, clean livens of fleet. And helps shippers -- and measure virtual environmental footprint, as well as strategies.
Introduce reduction policies, encourage carriers to do full truck loads instead of partial, switch from electric fork lifts. These can be for new and existing truck and locomotives. We show them how to quantify the benefits of idle reduction, low rolling resistance tires, increasing intermodal operation, adding devices that reduce toxin par tick late and other strategies. EPA did some of its own testing on these -- we not only surveyed existing literature to do the quantitative cages, we also did our own testing on long duration truck -- folks attending these Webinars in the past for FHWA we had colleagues talk about what we were doing in the idling arena, and we found significant fuel savings and toxin reduction. Tested over the road truck, 42 tests, six classes, eight trucks, drive cycles, monitor. Tested with and without different configurations of low rolling resistance, single-wide tires, and -- demonstrated a 10% per mile fuel savings on average. Reductions, not able to test -- Environmental Protection Agency is still in the -- mobile particulate -- control equipment done through voluntary diesel emissions retrofit program. We combine all these technologies tested into what we call the SmartWay upgrade kit.
Here's an example of what a SmartWay upgrade kit -- lower rolling resistance tires, improved -- some form of after treatment filter. Other applications we can offer kits from for non-road, port entries, trains, locomotives. These are some of the idle reduction technologies, no one, by the way -- so it can be unique to the fleet, the fleet can pick which technology works best in terms of operation and cost. Systems by battery, diesel, APU motor generator, truck stop amplification.
On the next slide you can see one design for what we call a boat tail design, the green helps reduce the pressure drop at end of vehicle to save fuel. Here, example on the Wal-Mart trailer shown you have both the trailer side -- alt side of trailer and different device that will be a front device that the tractor would go in front of that, cut the turbulence between the tractor, trail or, in the Whole Foods example -- low rolling resistance tires, we tested single-wide, one tire at end of axle instead of two. Most 18-wheelers have dual tire configuration at each axle exempt except the steer axle. This is a partner showing single wide on tractor, require special wheels made by special manufacturers, aluminum, use of hi-strength aluminum increases fuel savings because of the weight savings over steel. They have lower weight steel now that are also offering significant weight savings.
The exhaust after-treatments verified primarily particulate, oxidation catalysts, the estimated costs in particulate.
Here's an example of what the upgrade kit can do for the truck fleet in terms of fuel savings. You can see if you have a loan payment of $323 to purchase the p.m. filter, tires, arrow kit and heater as reduction technology, monthly fuel savings of 53throor you 0 you will have cash in your pocket at end of the month. The Environmental Protection Agency has been working with small business administration to come up with financing options. For the larger fleets the fuel savings were compelling enough and are moving in this direction, but some are the smaller, too much to swing, over two or three years they would be saving fuel, just couldn't come up with the up-front capital. We work the with SBA to work out express lanes, offered through several different financial entities, focus on smaller trucking companies who lack capital. Relatively fast processing, no collateral required, easy and flexible long-terms. You see where to apply for some of these loans to small trucking companies.
There are also a number of state financing programs that have -- financing option on the SmartWay kit, under the financing page you will find more about this under the section that talks about federal grants.
Our next step Environmental Protection Agency would like to do, to come up with larger pools of money, states working together, say along a large corridor like I-95, pool infrastructure bank money, create large scale multi-state projects. This would be very effective. We looked at different state infrastructure banks, found a number have available capital, any number that fall along the freight interstates. This is something Environmental Protection Agency is currently investigating with state partners.
We also are looking into creating sip. It will address the use of these technologies on class A combination trucks in highway operation.
SmartWay has also reached out to a number of publications, industry publications, general public publications to let people know about the trains. Some benefits. I should tell you that most of these publications have been done for Environmental Protection Agency at no cost to the taxpayer. They have been complementary.
In the fall we had our first partner awards ceremony with SmartWay awards, 24 partners presented with an award.
The national association of environmental management, the trucking companies attend the American trucking association's annual conference, this year in Texas. We didn't want to bias toward the larger fleets, we separated out awards to include large for-hire and small to medium size, privately owned, logistic, and affiliates. We have a space on our website to recognize the award winners and more information to tell how the awards were determined.
Recently the administrator of Environmental Protection Agency announced SmartWay grow and go, 25% of partners will begin using renewable fuel. There's the website for Grow and Go. Ethanol not, biodiesel and other fuel.
The contact information for SmartWay. Call the phone center, e-mail, call me directly. As Jennifer said when she shared by bio, my main function is testing of technologies. I will be happy to talk to you about anything. We think it's a terrific program. We find most exhilarating that we are helping industry save money while we are reducing CO2 emissions and improving air quality. It's very gratifying for us and I appreciate you giving me the chance to come talk with you about if. Thank you.
J. Symoun:
Thank you. I see there is one question posted for Cheryl. If you continue to think of question for Cheryl, please type them in. We'll now move onto our next presenter, given by Steve Winkelman of the Center for Clean Air Policy.
During his presentation we will share a website with everybody, once he brings up the website I will set it up so participants can toggle full-screen mode on and off. Steve, you can go ahead.
Steve Winkelman:
Thank you very much. Good afternoon everyone. It's funny not to be able to see you nodding at me. I am getting used to the web conferences. I will see many of you next week in D.C. what I will present here are two things. The CCAP transportation emission s guide book and freight solutions. A nice follow-on from Chris' presentation. I want to acknowledge Greg Dierkers, he was unable to make the call today.
A meeting in June 2005 bringing together 75 stake stakeholders, looking at trucks, rail, marine, a big chunk of the problem. I will show you on our website where to find the presentations from the meeting. We had speakers on each area. We calculated greenhouse gas savings in 2025, similar to Chris. The flavor, one example before going to the guide book, Chris and I haven't had a chance to share assumptions. His was much more detailed. We did a rough analysis, what the greenhouse gas savings we could expect to be reasonable 2025 framework as well. You can see if you look at the bottom row; for trucks about a 13% reduction and a shift to rail is included. Rail emissions remain flat and total emissions about a 12% reduction. I think Chris showed a 10% compared to current levels. Similar overall, a little comment down here to put into context, uncertainty about what other countries will do there's a general consensus we need to get to 1990 levels or below to eliminate climate --
In the right direction, not all the way there. The theme with transportation, it's tough to get below 1990 levels.
Breaking down by categories, distributed fairly evenly across different types of measures, technology, biofuel, intermodal shift, consistent with what Chris put together, haven't done a detailed comparison. But shift to rail is so attractive. We dug in on that a little, it's important to look at. We have a bit more of a policy approach than individual operator approach. This is the kind of thing that would require a public policy response. This is a DOE forecast of freight truck fuel economy, emissions. VMT, this red curve, you can see -- total emission says increasing, meaning it's important to see if there's anything we can do on the VMT growth, obviously modal shift. Jumping to the third bullet on the slide we see rail uses on average about 14% as much energy as trucks per ton mile. That range depends on commodity, from 8 to 50%, clearly rail makes sense for certain heavy commodities that aren't time sensitive. If you look at corridor, say there's a lot of truck traffic going in the same direction, let's put it on rail. Destinations and commodities could be different, but the potential shift, looking at commodities, combinations that make sense, we assume for our calculation about a 10% savings, reflected in the slide earlier. In other words, 10% of growth in trucks would be shifted to rail. Something that sounds modest, significant, and shouldn't be threatening to truckers, we are talking about shifting growth. Plenty of trucks on the road. You had a present presentation -- a couple of years ago -- a freight rail bottom line report, interesting numbers important in the context of freight solution dialogue. They saw potential savings of truck VMT of 15 to 16%, from the forecast, not current levels, with expected private investments of $130 0 mill billion, not trivial, probably not impossible.
Net savings, probably the most interesting point, net savings of $400 billion to $1 $1 trillion. In order to make this happen, a clear national freight policy would be needed with coordination with private sect or, federal, local to that. let me give you a sense of some of the findings from the meeting. We spend a lot of time going technologies across the mode. A policy perspective participant saw the need, looking at some of the infrastructure planning, operations and logistics. The first bullet, technologies are critical in the short term, exposure to pollution, working with some of the ports, LA, big lawsuit, short-term cleanups, park particulates, the break down, one of the presenters put it, "economic space," "political space." if imports are doubling, tripling over the next 20, 30 years, is there sufficient rail to make it happen. If there's a bridge that needs to be double stacked in Montana to get from LA to Chicago, who should pay for that? The folks in LA? Montana? Real need for the national planning. Around the same time of this meeting the DOT was putting together national freight framework presented last year, update this year, clearly progress in that direction, but a real sense that national plan was needed, supported by policies that could be implemented at state and local level. No way It will happen without coordinated planning.
Let me shift and gears and talk about our guide book. The transportation emissions guide book is a collection of -- based on works work with half dozen different states. Climb at action plans, analysis for these, wouldn't it be nice if someone gave us money to put this together, we want others to have the . With support from the Environmental Protection Agency, and others we collected information that is quite helpful. Our audience is primarily state and local lawmakers, the level of detail in here will probably not be satisfying to you. If you are a policy maker who wants to say how much can I save in terms of emissions fuel costs, particular project, how to compare, that's what it's for. Points to resources, FHWA tools who want to dig into more.
I will give you a quick idea of what's in the guide book and then we will see it live. Each section of the guide book, policy briefs, 40 of those, emissions calculator, probably the most important piece, allows users to customize with local data, calculations on what had savings are a achievable.
Each policy brief describes the policy, quantitative cages methodology, where we got the information, some empirical, some more modeling, technical references. Part one of the guidebook posted about year and a half ago focuses on travel , land use transit, smart growth, et cetera.
Part two looks at vehicle technologies, passenger, freight, intercity travel. Greenhouse gas standards, biofuels, mode shift.
We again allowed comparison. This slide, I hope you can read it, this is based on our default data across measures looking, say, for hypothetical state, what, how these policies add up. The California greenhouse gas standards come in first. Comprehensive smart growth second. Clearly this will depend on local fleet characteristics and assumption about aggressiveness and policies. Important to understand where you get the biggest bang for the buck, effort to achieve reductions.
Sample policy brief here I think would be more interesting to see in the guide book itself but this gives you a sense of what's in there. Describing the measure, showing steps for quantifying and details assumptions, results in this case, looking at 100 engines, savings of 10,000 tons of CO2 per year and a half million dollars. The guide book can be found there, and I am going to go ahead and share my website and see if I get this to work. Jennifer you have instructions about full screen?
You can click on the full screen button, if you want to turn it off, click on full screen again.
You are looking at our website, the spotlight box has the login function, I will skip that, folks can we the mouse moving around?
The user would log in here, the guide book is available on a couple of different fore mats, I will show you, there's an online version of the guide book. Integrated version that you can off load, off line version, flash enabled, and PDF, part one and two in the Excel spreadsheet. I am going to this version, extractible program that are you positives runs on your computer. The policy matrix, background information. the policy briefs part 1 and 2, policy, leave not carrying much freight on bikes. Shifting to part 2, to look at what the measures are here. I talked about these, more on passenger vehicles here. Freight, and intercity travel, struck stop electrification. Footnotes where everything comes from, what is the measure. Policy quantitative Poll quantitative cages, 1500-tons of CO2 a year, the NOx, criteria on per day basis, more typical way of looking. You see this little calculator link, on my computer I shift to the spreadsheet area, downloaded, extracted, shows the emissions calculator, same information, you can go through the different measures and either tab over to the next tab or hyper hyperlinked. You can see that we have our default data here shaded blue, this example I mentioned before, looking at hundred ports, utilize 34% with such and such a price of diesel. The user could put in their own data here. We think fuel prices are going up, just the calculations. The savings are shown over here in terms of -- you saw the format before. CO2, fuel savings, default data, and for the regional date.
We have default emission factors in here, as well as fuel prices, can all be updated by the user on this screen or overall sheet.
We deliberately didn't do a summation slide, some don't make sense together. This is more of a comparison table, I call it policy comparison matrix. Separate calculator for part 1. This is part 2 for the travel demand stuff you can look at. Let me go back to the guide book, give you more sense. We have the calculator here, talk about co-benefits, congestion, air pollution, et cetera, implementation issues, case studies of where a particular measure has been implemented, resources to look at in terms of particular studies, link to SmartWay work, where to get more information and footnotes. They look similar.
The policy comparison matrix looks like the summary you saw before in the spreadsheet. The last thing I will show you, the background noise, overall information on transportation emissions, freight emissions, both CO2 as well as criteria pollutants, diesel reduction milestones, good tools for those who want to learn more and for those who don't care to learn more. There's a modeling resource for cars and some on freight as well. I think that gives you a good sense of what's in the guide book. I am going to switch back to the presentation, and maybe Jennifer can help me back up. That would do it for now. You can see the contact information as soon as it's loaded back up. Thank you for your attention and I look forward to questions folks may have.
J. Symoun:
Thank you Steve. I do see we have a few questions typed in. I will start with those questions and then we can open the phone lines for more questions.
As soon as I ask the first question I am going to bring up a few poll questions to help us get a better idea of how to improve Talking Freight for the future. For the question of how many seminars did you participate in, in 2006, if you didn't participate if any you don't have to answer any of the poll questions. If you did, we definitely encourage your responses.
I see questions for Chris, and a question for Cheryl. We will start with the question for Cheryl. Is the upgrade kit (and payback calculation) geared more to long-haul than short-haul trucks? Also, any progress on tax concerns of mom-and-pop truckers?
C. Bynum:
The upgrade kit we are talking about, I gave an example in my presentation, that was geared toward -- the aero dynamic strategies, can be somewhat effective at lower speeds are most effective at high speeds. The lower resistance tires can be almost as effective, don't have the same exponential relationship as rolling drag does, the reality is most of the single four-axle trucks only use single tires anyway. Replacing smaller with wider would actually not be a good idea. They are primarily line haul trucks.
Second question, the fleet calculator, the individual fleets can check the benefit of the strategies for their specific fleet, that model is divided into line haul and short haul. So a trucker of any size, we actually have a smaller version of that, smarter version of the model based on what types of strategy, types of freight operations are generally going to be more amenable to employing. I don't actually know what was meant by the question on progress on tax concerns on mom and pop. That's not our main area of work. We provided comments on tax relief, weight waivers for APUs when the energy bill was being written Environmental Protection Agency does, when requested by different agencies, provide our perspective and our perspective has been fairly consistent, that we think these devices ought to be exempted from the weight -- weight waiver, taxes, ought to have tax relieve, but it's not something we can effect directly, except for being asked. For the hybrid tax incentives I mentioned in the energy bill legislation there, our contribution to that is to develop fuel economy test procedure and assist the Treasury as they request it.
J. Symoun:
That question came from Steve, if you want to elaborate more on that...
S. Winkelman:
We had work in California, weight project in LA, some concern that for a mom-and-pop trucker, operators some of the worst polluters, tough to get at, loss of income, some of the funding for the kits, grants were seen as increasing income, had a tax impact they couldn't quite afford or didn't quite understand. Sorry if the question was obtuse.
C. Bynum:
In that case yes, I think we working with the Small Business Administration, we wanted to move away from grants. There isn't enough money for everyone who would merit a granting. The loan program -- the drayage, that's a concern, working with the University of Texas, Texas -- those of you who don't know, different entities look at reduction in the state of Texas, to design a test that could be used to test different things you could do for dray trucks. Provided technical assistance to them for that test, currently under way. We may in the future, provided we get resources, follow-up with additional testing. On the website we have strategies for port operations, things you could do with dray trucks, policy perspective, technical perspective. The dray truck is going to be a tough nut to crack, though.
J. Symoun:
Again, I want to encourage everybody to respond to the poll questions on the screen if you have not already responded. The next question is for Chris. Are there any possible ways to reduce the initial costs of equipment such as having companies that participate in testing or trials have the equipment paid for through special funding resources?
C. Frey:
I am not sure I am the right person to answer the question. It would be a laudable goal to identify goals for ways that early a 2K079ers adopters can share, reduce the risk through demonstration program, make it practicable that potential adopters could see how it performs in the real world. But I am not the right person to say whether such things exist. Maybe somebody else.
J. Symoun:
Any of the other presenters have thoughts?
C. Bynum:
We had in the past, in the years, the three, nearly three years of SmartWay we have given away a lot of money, grants, for demonstration projects, fleets put on SmartWay upgrade kit, we collect data. Have done that in the past. The reality is, there's 600,000, including small fleets, every single one of them would benefit from the technologies. There just isn't enough money. We can't drag them through grants, looking at alternative incentives, like loans, working with sip caps, the tax and energy bill to help provide a sustainable source of financial assistance to these trucking fleets and other types of transport entities.
S. Winkelman:
I don't have anything to add a to that, except a question, identify something easy to do. What is the price tag for this? I don't know if I will call it low-hanging fruit, but the full potential of many issues that payback in a couple of years, therefore are from a societal and policy perspective, clearly no regrets and that benefits, but not enough cash up front, what's the price tag. We do work on overall design of climate policy. If this stuff pays for itself, that's really important to look at. What had would it take to get there. All these funding sources, what's possible with existing efforts? How do we get at this full potential? So much of this makes so much sense.
J. Symoun:
Thank you. Chris, another question for you. Did you evaluate any operational strategies? If so, what were your main findings?
C. Frey:
We did look at some operational strategies. Most of what we looked at turns out to be technology based. In the truck mode, adjusting the load profile on a flatbed trailer, air mode, traffic management, trimming non-essential weight. Examples. We didn't, at least not yet, stratify results by operational versus technology. I think in some ways it's harder to access the operational strategies than technology. An area where more could be done to look at them, come up with a more extensive set of assessment than we have to date. My qualitative comment, clearly they are important, and the ones we looked at have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from a given mode on the order of at least several%. That's actually fairly good. If any one best practice can achieve a few% reduction, implement many of them together, that's where you get the biggest potential for large-scale reductions in gas emissions. Anyway, I think beyond that I am 23409 sure not sure I can say much more.
J. Symoun:
What feedback have you gotten on use of the emissions calculator / guidebook tools? Any way of tracking impact so far?
S. Winkelman:
Great question. In terms of feedback, two years ago there was a flurry of activity from state, local, international, on the tool, wanting to know when part 2 would be available. It's finally up on the website. By comment reflected before, folks with expertise in a particular area, the level of detail in questions, models, someone running a four-step model, calculations here will be pretty simple. For others, state energy planners, folks putting together climate action plans, helpful to use as a starting point. How does this add up? What does this save?
Part 2, we just haven't done a full announcement. You are the first folks to get the web link. We will find out more. In terms of tracking, we didn't have a -- function in part one. Put one in for part 2 vehicle technology, fuel. We will have a better sense of who our users are. In terms of track being impacts, loans we I s I don't think we can credibly do that. Identify, tell you which state, but I can't credibly take credit for reductions. I hope it helps them along the way.
J. Symoun:
Thank you. That's all the questions I see typed in. Any questions here? I am in a room at Federal Highway with several people. I will open up the phone lines to see if there are any questions on the phone.
Operator:
If you would like to ask a question press star 1, unmute, to withdraw press star 2. One moment please. At this time I am showing no questions, ma'am.
S. Winkelman:
I have one quick question for Cheryl. Is it still called an 18-wheeler even though single tires are used?
C. Bynum:
It's a 10 wheeler with the -- tires. But we e still call it an 18-wheeler.
J. Symoun:
On that note we will wrap up, with some humor. I want to thank all three presenters for three great presentations today. I will leave the poll questions up a few more minutes, if you didn't get a chance to respond please do.
I want to thank everybody for attending today's seminar. The recorded version of this event will be available within the next week on the Talking Freight website.
The next seminar will be held on February 21 and is titled "Freight Demand Modeling." If you haven't done so already, I encourage you to visit the Talking Freight Web Site and sign up for this seminar. Please note that there is a new web address for Talking Freight registration. This address is up on the slide on your screen. I also encourage you to join the Freight Planning LISTSERV if you have not already done so.
Enjoy the rest of your day!