Crowley – Kartikey Shukla – 2023

Goals

Crowley, a US-based firm providing logistics, marine, and energy services, seeks to develop a decarbonization roadmap for its business unit in Alaska. The firm is committed to reducing scope 1 & 2 emissions by 42% by 2030 with a base year of 2020.

Crowley enlisted Kartikey Shukla, an MBA student with 6 years of experience in strategy consulting in energy and sustainability domain, to develop an action plan by analyzing operations, emission profiles, and industry trends.

Solutions

Kartikey used a three-part approach:

• Analyze emissions and developed sectoral decarbonization roadmap: After analyzing business operations and identifying hard-to-abate processes, Kartikey dissected the 42% emission reduction target by sectors (reduction targets: electricity 90%, heating oil 25%, diesel trucks 85%, marine vessels 60%).
• Benchmarked 25 emission abatement solutions: Kartikey benchmarked technology solutions across the identified sectors, considering the ease of deployment and potential business impact, this exercise highlighted battery-swapping electric truck and solar PV.
• Pilot Projects initiatives: Kartikey identified 2 locations ideal for piloting electric trucks and deploying solar. He collaborated with 20+ internal stakeholders, 13 companies, and 20+ consultants to develop detailed business cases with analysis of projected return on investments, emission reductions, and financial modeling.

Potential Impact

The decarbonization roadmap is developed on the guiding principles of “think big, start small, and scale fast”. The proposed pilot projects of battery-swapping electric truck and solar PV, offsetting emissions by 99% and 51% respectively, serve as pivotal milestones. The insights gained from these projects will assist Crowley in accelerating the scaling efforts.

Potentially, these initiatives will also open the business opportunity of renewable integrated battery-swapping as-a-service for commercial heavy vehicles. In essence, implementing the roadmap enables Crowley to eliminate 15,000 metric tons of CO2 in the next 7 years.