More than 15% of postal delivery vehicles ran on alternative-fuels in 2016, according to IPC’s 2017 Postal Sector Sustainability Report, which examines the carbon-management efforts of more than 20 postal organizations worldwide.
Since 2012, the total number of vehicles in postal operations has increased by 77,000 (+13%), while the total number of alternative-fuel vehicles has increased by 31,000 (+42%).
In 2016, alternative-fuel vehicles account for 15.7% of vehicles belonging to the 20 participants of IPC’s Environmental Measurement and Monitoring System (EMMS) program, compared to 12.5% in 2012.
Between 2015 and 2016, the total number of vehicles increased by 10,000, while the number of alternative-fuel vehicles increased by 12,000. This reflects a decrease in both the number of non-alternative-fuel vehicles and also traditional bicycles, and demonstrates participants’ ongoing efforts to increase the proportion of alternative-fuel vehicle models within their fleets.
Holger Winklbauer, CEO of IPC, said, “Many participants in our program are increasing the number of electric vehicles in their delivery fleets. The number of electric vehicles reported by the EMMS participants increased by 3,000 between 2015 and 2016, such that electric models now account for 29% of all alternative-fuel vehicles and 4.6% of the total vehicle fleet.
“In comparison, globally only 0.2% of all cars in circulation are electric vehicles. This clearly shows that our participants are leading the way when it comes to investing in low-carbon delivery.”
Over the eight years of the EMMS program, participating posts have achieved an accumulated saving of 1.3 million tons of carbon emissions from transport. Using a conservative conversion factor for diesel, this equates to 460,000,000 liters of fuel saved, and represents a financial saving of 403m (US$446m).
When looking at the savings made through the reductions in the group’s electricity consumption since the start of the program, decreasing from 9.95TWh in 2008 to 7.77TWh in 2016 (an accumulated saving of 11.6TWh over eight years), this corresponds to a saving of 1bn (US$1.2bn). The total savings made in electricity use and fuel consumption amount to 1.48bn (US$1.64bn).
“While we recognize that achieving further improvements becomes even more challenging as participants attain higher scores, with only a further three percentage points required to reach the target, we are optimistic that the group can achieve this goal in the next four years,” added Winklbauer.
“Indeed, the group’s 2.2% point improvement between 2015 and 2016 exceeds the 0.8% point rate that is required to reach the 2020 target within the next four years.”
Postal organizations participating in IPC’s EMMS program include An Post (Ireland), Australia Post (Australia), Austrian Post (Austria), bpost (Belgium), Correios (Brazil), Correos (Spain), CTT Portugal Post (Portugal), Deutsche Post DHL Group (Germany), Le Groupe La Poste (France), New Zealand Post Group (New Zealand), POST Luxembourg (Luxembourg), Poste Italiane (Italy), Posten Norge (Norway), Posti (Finland), PostNL (the Netherlands), PostNord (Denmark and Sweden), Royal Mail Group (United Kingdom), South African Post Office (South Africa), Swiss Post (Switzerland), and the United States Postal Service (USA).
November 13, 2017