GreenXpress: Converting Emissions into Profits

February 20, 2023

India and Climate Change

India is third largest emitter of GHGs and a fast growing one. But on a per capita basis- India is one of the lowest emitter of GHGs. This means, as India becomes richer and its aspirational young population consumers more- GHG emissions will shoot up. Already, India is on its way to become largest consumer of fossil fuels by 2040.

Given that rest of the world will invest hard to control GHGs and commit to aggressive reduction targets- India will stand out even more as biggest emitter in decades to come.

Reduction of GHGs in India will become the difference between achieving climate goals or missing them by a distance.

While it is tough to balance growth vs. GHG reduction in many industries- construction, FMCG, steel, thermal power- Logistics presents a low handing fruit to control emissions and at the same time economically attractive.

What is GreenXpress

GreenXpress is an initiative by WebXpress to leverage technology to help shippers and logistics companies accurately measure their GHG footprint and find opportunities to reduce and replace the same.

Transportation and Logistics is one of the key contributors to Green House Gases (GHGs). With action on climate change becoming urgent world-wide, trucking companies, 3PLs and their customers need to play their part to reduce impact of their activities.

But most manufacturing and retail companies do not have a detailed measurement of their emissions, especially in support activities such as logistics. Most logistics companies do not apportion their emissions by customer or by shipments.

GreenXpress helps companies gather data from their operations and their logistics partners’ operations in real time and calculate emissions for each shipment.

 GreenXpress Framework

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Measure

Key to any GHG program is to accurately measure emission from various activities and their drivers. GreenXpress provides a set of tools gather data from multiple sources and arrive at accurate emissions.

You can get an idea of emission for every vehicle trip, every leg of journey, route wise pattern of emission, logistics partner wise consumptions.

Reduce

Our algorithms then calculate potential GHG reduction opportunities. Our tool suggests a better vehicle mix, or loading strategies, or better route plan to help you reduce GHGs.

You can draw up various “ideal” scenarios and share it with your field team to achieve the same. You can deploy our “Green Procurement” tools to ask vendors to supply vehicles with less emissions.

 Replace

 One of the fastest way to reduce emissions is to replace it altogether. Our tool helps you to find out vehicles, logistics partner and routes with maximum emissions. You can replace vehicles with new, less emission producing models, deploy EVs in certain routes.

Our tool helps all our customers collaborate to find our opportunities to combine load and even facilities to improve vehicle utilization and thus altogether replace trips from system.

Trade

One of the key questions for companies in developing nations is to find funds for replacing ageing and emission heavy assets. GreenXpress is in process to connect with multiple Carbon Trading exchanges world-wide. You can get your green initiatives certified and earn green credits. These can then be bought by companies in need to mitigate their emissions.

In coming years, carbon trading across nations is expected to become a trillion-dollar industry, transferring funds to low hanging opportunities to reduce emissions.

Emissions in Domestic Transportation

Domestic Transportation typically consists of Road transportation, railway movements, air transport and water ways (Inland as well as coastal).

Transportation contributes to GHGs in many ways – some direct, some hidden. Let us understand each of these:

Fuel

The obvious culprit is diesel. Less diesel consumed is less carbon emission, less nitrogen dioxide, less sulphur dioxide. But growth in economy requires more trucks, more diesel. India has an estimated 10 mn commercials vehicles, predominantly diesel based.

  • The emissions vary widely between truck models, year of manufacturing, standard followed BS IV vs BSIII and BS VI), route on which they move (better roads, less mountains) etc. 
  • Truck load factor is a toss-up between faster supply chain and reduced emissions with fuller but later delivery
  • For LTL cargo, load factor, vehicle type etc. are not in control of shipper

 Tyres

  •  More tyres used means more carbon footprint.
  • Tyres are pure carbon. From rubber to carbon black, everything about tyres leads to emissions. 
  • Tyre usage is a factor of type of vehicle, load in vehicle, route type, road condition, driving style, rotation, tyre pressure and a whole lot of parameters  

Type of Vehicle

The key to lesser emission is maintenance. A well-maintained truck emits less carbon, Sulphur dioxide, Nitrogen oxide and many other villains. 

GreenXpress measures maintenance history, parts changed, serving done to arrive at maintenance score of a vehicle. With advent of IoT devices such as OBD, real time track of poorly maintained vehicles and their emissions can be carried out. 

Load Factor

The product loaded in vehicle determines emission. Lighter, more compact products have lesser carbon footprint and heavier, voluminous products emit more carbon. 

GreenXpress measures weight as well as volume of all products and assigns carbon score at consignment level. GreenXpress algorithms can suggest optimum load mix to ensure best load vs volume trade-off for given vehicle. 

Manufacturing companies can arrive at optimum mix of fleet. A trucking company can measure carbon footprint of each customer and decide optimum mix. 

Route Plan

User of greener routes helps reduce emissions. One of the key overlooked factor in countries such as India is route where vehicle has to ply. A route with good quality roads, less traffic, less toll waiting time, less inclines, better surface will reduce emissions. 

GreenXpress measures many such parameters and can rank a route in terms of its greenness. For e.g. a route with more rest areas and work-shops will mean less tired drivers driving better and maintaining vehicles better. 

GreenXpress assigns a green score to a route, even if distance may be more as compared to a shorter route. GreenXpress IoT can ensure route compliance by driver and measure deviations. 

GreenXpress also measures fuel consumed, tyre tread usage for such routes and thus can score every journey on every route.

Fuel pumps

Fuel adulteration is a major menace in India. Key to ensure less adulteration is fuel fill at certified pumps. 

GreenXpress has route wise data of certified pumps. GreenXpress IoT can measure emissions from vehicles with fuel filled from various pumps and score the fuel pumps. GreenXpress algorithms suggest a fuel fill plan based on above parameters and thus ensure reduced emissions 

Driver behaviour

One of the key stakeholder to reduce emissions is driver. A well-trained driver will reduce harsh acceleration or hard braking or unnecessary revving up of engines. This results in lesser emissions. Excessive idling too can lead to a lot of diesel wastage 

Driver should drive at optimum speed and should be well rested to ensured focussed driving. In fact, all of above have many related benefits in terms of cost savings, safety and reduced accidents. 

Why use GreenXpress

Transporters and shippers both profit immensely from reducing carbon footprint. But without tools such as GreenXpress they do not know how to attain emission goals and such profits. 

It is responsibility of shippers to provide incentives to transporters to go green. Shippers can ask Transporters to adopt GreenXpress and provide data to measure their carbon footprint.

GreenXpress is available a Cloud based tool for quick deployment and has ready dashboards for real time control on carbon emissions.

Trucking is necessary for modern life. Reducing emissions from trucking is possible. All it requires is tools to measure and will to use such tools. 

Making Green profitable for stakeholders is the surest way of achieving Net Zero goals.