City of Houston – Kris Yowtak – 2020

Goals

The Houston Airport System, in order to comply with the City of Houston’s goals of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050, wishes to begin the process of electrification of its medium and heavy-duty vehicle fleet in an effort reduce its overall emissions and environmental impact. The Houston Airport System enlisted Kris Yowtak to develop a framework for transitioning its fleet towards more environmentally sustainable operations.

Solutions

Kris approached the challenge by breaking the project down into three parts:

• Perform a fleet analysis by building a profile of vehicles in the fleet. This data was used to generate an emissions inventory with the help of emission tools and models. Kris identified vehicles that were good candidates for electrification. .
• Perform an infrastructure analysis to understand what facility upgrades may be needed to support the installation of charging stations. He analyzed electricity bills to determine the organization’s rate structure and engaged in conversations with the energy and the transmission utility companies to understand what metrics were needed in order to proceed.
• Performed total cost of ownership case studies to understand how a medium or heavy-duty vehicle powered by diesel fuel compared to an electric vehicle equivalent.

Potential Impact

Replacing the medium and heavy-duty fleet of vehicles currently running on fossil fuels with battery electric equivalents would decrease the Houston Airport System’s annual greenhouse gas emissions up to anywhere from 66% to 86%.

The Houston Airport System can be less dependent on fossil fuel to power its operations, less prone to economic risk in a city that frequently experiences extreme weather, while aggressively taking action to meet the city of Houston’s ambitious climate goals.