Decarbonizing heavy vehicles and industry could take decades. That makes biofuel development crucial now.
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Frank Lemos manages regional operations at shipping firm Titan Freight Systems, but still dons a uniform sometimes to move a truck between terminals or train a driver. He calls climate change a big weight on everybody’s shoulder, but says fuel costs matter, too, because trucking is critical to the economy: You start messing with transportation in this world and it could get ugly really quick. (Leah Nash/InvestigateWest)
These days, Frank Lemos manages a shipping operation, but the former truck driver still gets behind the wheel occasionally to train new drivers or to fill a staffing hole. When he does, he notices a big difference. The firm recently moved away from conventional diesel fuel, and without it there’s something missing: the permeating petroleum smell that drivers wear after a day inside a big rig.
These days, Frank Lemos manages a shipping operation, but the former truck driver still gets behind the wheel occasionally to train new drivers or to fill a staffing hole. When he does, he notices a big difference. The firm recently moved away from conventional diesel fuel, and now there s something missing: the permeating petroleum smell that drivers wear after a day inside a big rig. You come home, and you don t get to just jump in bed if you re tired. You have to take a shower, or else someone s going to kick you out of bed, said Lemos, who is operations manager for Portland-based Titan Freight Systems.
Why Biofuels and Hydrogen Are Key to Our Zero Carbon Future
Cascadia needs to move heavy vehicles and industry off fossil fuels. Meet the people inventing life after diesel.
Peter Fairley is an award-winning journalist based in Victoria and San Francisco, whose writing has appeared in Scientific American, NewScientist, Hakai Magazine, Technology Review, the Atlantic, Nature and elsewhere. SHARES The Parkland refinery in Burnaby is changing its diet. Designed to convert Canadian petroleum and bitumen into jet fuel, gasoline, diesel and other fuels, it meets BC’s clean fuel standard by increasingly blending in renewable feedstocks.
Photo via Alamy. [Editor’s note: This is the latest in a year-long occasional series of articles produced by InvestigateWest in partnership with The Tyee and other news organizations exploring what it will take to shift the Cascadia region to a zero-carbon economy, and is supported in part by the Fund for Investigativ
Cone Zone: Week Of April 26, 2021
AUI, Inc. of Albuquerque will continue work to construct the Canyon Rim Trail Underpass.
Due to the amount of construction activity that includes trenching, excavation and utility relocation near the trailhead, the trailhead parking lot and a 100 ft. section of the trail near the trailhead will be closed for safety. During this week’s construction, crews will be working along the westbound and eastbound shoulders of NM 502 to clear and remove vegetation, but no vehicular travel lanes will be impacted at this time.
AUI will be hauling excess material from project site to a site off DP Road. They will be using end dump trucks to haul excess material. Traffic signs and devices will be installed. Motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians and are advised to stay alert for construction personnel and equipment and use caution traveling through the work zone.
Renewable diesel also yields far less carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that drive climate change.
Destructive wildfire seasons inspired Titan’s shift to renewable diesel a year ago, after a fire devastated Phoenix, Oregon, five miles from one of the firm’s terminals. “Doing nothing is not a course of action,” is how Titan’s owner Keith Wilson described his visceral response.
Wilson knew climate change was stoking Cascadia’s fires, and that diesel vehicles produce over a third of Oregon’s transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions. Biofuels cut Titan’s petroleum diesel consumption by 93% and cut its carbon footprint by over two-thirds.