Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/85369
The future of fleet energy Price spikes slowly driving U.S. toward alternative fuels NTEA Work Truck Show in Indianapolis was about as close as I'll ever get to the Nobel Prize. Chu was a co-winner in 1997 for his work in physics, and today he's applying that scientific knowledge to help the United States find viable energy solutions in an ever-bleaker world of speculation, geopolitics and the usual supply- and-demand issues. We're going to talk a lot next month in CCJ about alternative fuels, but for now, it's enough to say that fuel prices are suddenly on the rise again, as you well know – and nobody is happy about that. Unfortunately, this is our new reality. On the surface, the sudden price spikes look aw- fully suspicious to the average American; in real- ity, the issues behind them are mind-alteringly complex. To get a handle on what's going on, you have to look at a S We're sitting on top of the largest deposit of natural gas reserves in the world. wide range of factors from how many cars the Chinese are building, what's happening in the world financial markets and what someone in Iran said to the press this morning – to name just a few. But if we learned anything from the first round of major fuel price spikes a few years back, it's that the days of sedentary, logical energy markets are over – and the latest increases only reinforce that lesson. For years, American fleets and car owners could count on a slow but steady – and largely predictable – climb in the price of fossil fuels as global demand gradually increased. Today, prices can go haywire liter- 26 COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | APRIL 2012 itting in the front row listen- ing to U.S. Energy Secretary Dr. Stephen Chu speak at the ally overnight, and any long-term trends we can identify today all are negative. As Chu noted, 12 million new cars were built and sold in the United States last year, and that number undoubtedly was flat due to the recession; consider that the Chinese put 16 million cars on the road last year. Chu said the United States is on track to build – and fill up – 20 million new cars a year by 2020. That indicates the future of fuel prices in this country and around the globe. But the news isn't all bad. While it looked for many years that the Middle East won the jackpot when it came to a bunch of dinosaurs dying and turning into flammable black gunk Both compressed natural gas and propane yield roughly a 12 percent drop in general vehicle efficiency com- pared to higher-priced diesel and gasoline, but today's fleet managers are realizing they can work with that number.