Parking lots are becoming as important as cars in climate change efforts
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
It’s not just cars that will be going through energy transition in the years ahead. The parking lots where EVs recharge are a growing focus of construction efforts linked to climate change and carbon reduction.
A law approved in France last month requires that parking lots with 80 or more spaces be covered by solar panels within the next five years. For the biggest parking lots, those with more than 400 spaces, three years has been granted to have at least half of the parking lot’s surface area covered by solar.
Similar renewable energy design ideas are expected to gain more market share in the U.S. if not necessarily through a federal mandate.
“You’ll see a lot of the same stuff that you’re seeing in France and other countries, but it probably won’t necessarily play out the same way, in terms of federal action versus state action,” said Bill Abolt, vice president and lead of energy business for infrastructure consulting firm AECOM.
As local and state governments create mandates for renewable energy deployment, and the federal government takes an incentive-based approach to encourage climate technology through measures like the Inflation Reduction Act, major corporations are making their own commitments to solar power.
Target, Home Depot, Walmart and renewable energy
Target revamped one of its California stores with solar panel carports this spring. Home Depot is making efforts to have all of its stores use only renewable energy by 2030, while Walmart hopes to achieve this by 2040. These efforts won’t only come through producing renewable power on-site — procurement of renewable energy from utility-scale projects is among strategic options to meet these goals — but investing in solar power for store locations will become more prevalent.
“You have a lot of significant companies that have stepped up and made commitments to renewable energy and similar things with local governments and institutions. So, there’s no doubt that that level of investment has accelerated the development of technology, the deployment of more cost effective solar,” Abolt said.
The cost to install solar has dropped by more than 60% over the past decade, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
“There’s no doubt that the cost curve of solar gets better and better all the time and will continue to do so. Private business has done a lot, and we’re seeing even more private investment likely to happen as a result,” Abolt said.
Global commercial real estate company CBRE is partnering with renewable energy company Altus Power to work with clients including many Fortune 500 companies on solar projects.
“The topics that are top of mind for these corporations right now are decarbonization and energy efficiency and energy resiliency,” said Lars Norell, co-founder and co-CEO of Altus Power. “The No. 1 answer is building-sited clean energy,” he said.
Norell said it has now become possible for businesses of all sizes to consider renewable energy projects.
“Something that Walmart or IKEA or Amazon does, smaller family-owned businesses come to us and say ‘Should we do the same thing? Could our roof hold solar?’ The answer in almost all those cases is absolutely yes,” he said.
Public expectations and pressure from boards are key factors in why major corporations tend to act quicker than smaller companies when it comes to renewable energy. “In many cases, smaller companies don’t have quite such an audience that is expecting them to act, but many of them are acting sort of out of self-interest or because they would like to save money,” Norell said.
Solar power and commercial real estate
Solar carports and rooftop solar are the primary solar designs being adopted in the world of commercial real estate.
“We find that there is almost no debate around the wisdom of putting solar in a parking lot,” Norell said. “We believe that rooftop solar and carport solar are going to be easier for most communities to not only accept but embrace as a way to make clean energy.”
In recent years, an increasing number of solar projects have been built over commercial parking lots, and state governments have created incentives specifically for solar carports, including the 2018 Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target, and the Maryland Energy Administration Solar Canopy Grant Program, which provides funding to incentivize the use of solar carports and parking garages, with EV chargers included on site. It has provided up to $250,000 per solar carport project, creating an incentive for commercial businesses to invest in the projects.
“Increasing power prices and more government support, like in France where they mandated it, we think will mean that more parking lots are going to have carports,” Norell said.
Commercial retail centers and logistics buildings are prime targets for solar. Commercial retail centers, like grocery stores, consume higher levels of energy and often feature big parking lots. Logistics buildings like warehouses feature large rooftops that are optimal places to implement rooftop solar energy.
Altus Power forecasts that most buildings will have a solar power system over the next decade.
With the growing production and consumption of EVs — the International Energy Agency reported that U.S. electric car sales doubled in market share to 4.5% in 2021, reaching 630,000 EVs sold — solar-powered commercial businesses become more beneficial to consumers requiring EV chargers in parking lots.
The same will be the case for warehouses and distribution centers.
“Once we start getting good at having electrical-powered van fleets and trucks, all those trucks come to those logistical buildings, and that’s an excellent spot to put up fleet chargers, so that when the truck is busy … we take the opportunity to charge its electrical battery as well,” Norell said. “We can charge it with clean electricity because we’re making solar power on the roof, and that’s then going into the truck.”
Mining company Vale is turning to Caterpillar to provide this massive, 240-ton battery-electric haul truck in a bid to slash carbon emissions at its mines by 2030.
Caterpillar and Vale have signed an agreement that will see the Brazilian mining company test severe-duty battery electric mining trucks like the 793 BEV (above), as well as V2G/V2x energy transfer systems and alcohol-powered trucks. The test will help Vale make better equipment choices as it works to achieve its goals of reducing direct and indirect carbon emissions 33% by 2030 and eliminating 100% of its net emissions by 2050.
If that sounds weird, consider that most cars and trucks in Brazil run on either pure ethyl alcohol/ethanol (E100) or “gasohol” (E25).
“We are developing a portfolio of options to decarbonize Vale’s operations, including electrification and the use of alternative fuels in the mines. The most viable solutions will be adopted,” explains Ludmila Nascimento, energy and decarbonization director Vale. “We believe that ethanol has great potential to contribute to the 2030 target because it is a fuel that has already been adopted on a large scale in Brazil, with an established supply network, and which requires an active partnership with manufacturers. We stand together to support them in this goal.”
Vale will test a 240-ton Cat 793 battery-electric haul truck at its operations in Minas Gerais, and put energy transfer solutions to a similar tests at Vale’s operations in Pará over the next two-three years. Caterpillar and Vale have also agreed to a joint study on the viability of a dual-fuel (ethanol/diesel) solution for existing ICE-powered assets.
Vale claims to be the world’s largest producer of iron ore and nickel, and says it’s committed to an investment of between $4 billion to $6 billion to meet its 2030 goal.
Cat 793 electric haul truck
During its debut in 2022, the Cat 793 haul truck was shown on a 4.3-mile test course at the company’s Tucson proving grounds. There, the 240-ton truck was able to achieve a top speed of over 37 mph (60 km/h) fully loaded. Further tests involved the loaded truck climbing a 10% grade for a full kilometer miles at 7.5 mph before unloading and turning around for the descent, using regenerative braking to put energy back into the battery on the way down.
Despite not giving out detailed specs, Caterpillar reps reported that the 793 still had enough charge in its batteries for to complete more testing cycles.
Electrek’s Take
Electric equipment and mining to together like peanut butter and jelly. In confined spaces, the carbon emissions and ear-splitting noise of conventional mining equipment can create dangerous circumstances for miners and operators, and that can lead to injury or long-term disability that’s just going to exacerbate a mining operation’s ability to keep people working and minerals coming out of the ground.
By working with companies like Vale to prove that forward-looking electric equipment can do the job as well as well as (if not better than) their internal combustion counterparts, Caterpillar will go a long way towards converting the ICE faithful.
SOURCES | IMAGES: Caterpillar, Construction Equipment, and E&MJ.
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American mine; via NPROXX
Argonne National Laboratory is building a new research and development facility to independently test large-scale hydrogen fuel cell systems for heavy-duty and off-road applications with funding from the US Department of Energy.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) is hoping Argonne Nat’l Lab’s extensive fuel cell research experience, which dates back to 1996, will give it unique insights as it evaluates new polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell systems ranging from 150 to 600 kilowatts for use in industrial vehicle and stationary power generation applications.
The new Argonne test facility will help prove (or, it should be said, disprove) the validity of hydrogen as a viable fuel for transportation applications including heavy trucks, railroad locomotives, marine vessels, and heavy machines used in the agriculture, construction, and mining industries.
“The facility will serve as a national resource for analysis and testing of heavy-duty fuel cell systems for developers, technology integrators and end-users in heavy-duty transportation applications including [OTR] trucks, railroad locomotives, marine vessels, aircraft and vehicles used in the agriculture, construction and mining industries,” explains Ted Krause, laboratory relationship manager for Argonne’s hydrogen and fuel cell programs. “The testing infrastructure will help advance fuel cell performance and pave the way toward integrating the technology into all of these transportation applications.”
The Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO) of DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy is dedicating about $4 million to help build the new Argonne facility, which is set to come online next fall.
Electrek’s Take
It’s going to be hard to convince me that the concentrated push for a technology as inefficient as hydrogen fuel cells has more to do with any real consumer or climate benefit than it does keeping the throngs of people it will take to manufacture, capture, transport, store, house, and effectively dispense hydrogen gainfully employed through the next election cycle.
As such, while case studies like the hydrogen combustion-powered heavy trucks that have been trialed at Anglo American’s Mogalakwena mine since 2021 (at top) and fuel cell-powered concepts like Komatsu’s medium-sized excavator (above) have proven that hydrogen as a fuel can definitely work on a job site level while producing far fewer harmful emissions than diesel, I think swappable batteries like the ones being shown off by Moog Construction and Firstgreen have a far brighter future.
Speaking of Moog, we talked to some of the engineers being their ZQuip modular battery systems on a HEP-isode of The Heavy Equipment Podcast a few months back. I’ve included it, below, in case that’s something you’d like to check out.
SOURCES | IMAGES: ANL, Komatsu, and NPROXX.
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Velocity truck rental is doing its part to help commercial fleets electrify by energizing 47 high-powered charging stations at four strategic dealer locations across Southern California. And they’re doing it now.
The new Velocity Truck Rental & Leasing (VTRL) charging network isn’t some far-off goal being announced for PR purposes. The company says its new chargers are already in the ground, and set to be fully online and energized by the end of this month at at VTRL facilities in Rancho Dominguez (17), Fontana (14), the City of Industry (14), and San Diego (2).
45 120 kW Detroit e-Fill chargers make up the bulk of VTRL’s infrastructure project, while two DCFC stations from ChargePoint get them to 47. All of the chargers, however, where chosen specifically to cater to the needs of medium and heavy-duty battery electric work trucks.
The company says it chose the Detroit e-Fill commercial-grade chargers because they’ve already proven themselves in Daimler-heavy fleets with their ability to bring Class 8 Freightliner eCascadias, Class 6 and 7 Freightliner eM2 box trucks, and RIZON Class 4 and 5 cabover trucks, “to 80% state of charge in just 90 minutes or less.”
At Velocity, we are not just reacting to the shift towards electric mobility; we are at the forefront with our customers and actively shaping it. By integrating high-powered, commercial-grade charging solutions along key transit corridors, we are ensuring that our customers have the support they need today. This charging infrastructure investment is a testament to our commitment to helping our customers transition smoothly to electromobility solutions and to prepare for compliance with the Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) regulations.
David Deon, velocity president
Velocity plans to offer flexible charging options to accommodate the needs of different fleets, including both managed, “charging as a service” subscription plans and self-managed/opportunity charging during daily routes. While trucks are charging, drivers and operators will be able to relax in comfortable break rooms equipped with WIFI, television, snacks, water, and restrooms.
Electrek’s Take
While it feels a bit underwhelming to write about trucking companies simply following the letter of the law in California, the rollout of an all-electric, zero-emission commercial trucking fleet remains something that, I think, should be celebrated.
As such, I’m celebrating it. I hope you are, too.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Global Newswire; Daimler Trucks.
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