To complicate matters further, they’ll need to structure their new solutions and protocols carefully, ensuring they support the success of fleets that abate each pillar of the energy trilemma.

What is the energy trilemma?

The energy trilemma refers to the challenge of balancing the interdependent needs of energy security, environmental sustainability, and affordability. These three priorities often conflict with one another, making it difficult to strike the appropriate combination. For example, securing energy supply in the current market may require fossil fuels, which puts environmental sustainability goals at risk.

It is important to consider each pillar in isolation as well as in tandem with the others to build equity and longevity into our changing energy models. As the U.S. continues to pursue the clean energy transition, policy, market structures, infrastructure development, and capital investment must all be made with the balance of the energy trilemma in mind.

How does the energy trilemma affect fleets?

Because the transportation sector consumes significant energy and contributes nearly a third of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, fleet operators are pressured to adopt sustainable fueling practices. Whether swapping for sustainable fuels or transitioning to electric vehicles, each fleet’s unique energy transition will require careful consideration of the trilemma’s pillars.

A small fleet relying primarily on diesel, for example, may lack the upfront capital investment capacity to adopt electric vehicles at this time. To make progress toward sustainability while keeping operations affordable, this fleet might be best suited to renewable diesel, which offers up to 85% lower lifecycle emissions than traditional diesel ICE vehicles. But renewable diesel is rarely offered at gas stations, so this fleet may choose to work with a mobile fueler like Booster® to secure a reliable supply of the renewable fuel.

Similar multi-pronged solutions scenarios abound within the transportation sector as fleets find new and creative ways to adapt to the changing market.

How can you balance the energy trilemma with your fleet fueling?

Put simply: the major way fleets meet with the energy trilemma is in fueling and fuel burning. In response, fleets can improve energy efficiency while keeping costs low and maintaining a secure fuel supply by switching to sustainable alternative fuels, using fuel-efficient or zero-emission vehicles, optimizing fuel economy, monitoring and analyzing data, and adopting mobile fuel delivery.

Mobile fuel delivery, in particular, helps fleets balance the complex needs of the energy transition by cushioning a customer-centric service model within a flexible, clean, efficient delivery structure to support fleet sustainability while enhancing overall fleet productivity. Here are the ways mobile fuel delivery responds to each pillar of the energy trilemma:

1. Energy Affordability

Despite widespread desire to make fleets cleaner and greener, the vast majority of fleet managers are constrained first and foremost by budgets. Unfortunately, many new energy sources for fleets are capital-intensive, requiring infrastructure investment or vehicle upgrades, and this is an affordability barrier for many.

Mobile fueling helps by providing cost-effective and convenient fueling solutions to a range of fleet types. By eliminating the need for fleets to travel to and from fixed fueling infrastructure, mobile fueling reduces fueling costs and unproductive labor time. In fact, mobile fueling by Booster offers higher productivity and lower emissions while saving fleets an average of $1600 annually per vehicle.

2. Environmental Sustainability

Mobile fueling helps fleets reduce their environmental impact by enabling the adoption of sustainable fuels. By providing on-site fueling for low- and zero-emissions fuel vehicles, mobile fueling supports the transition to a more sustainable transportation system by enabling easy adoption of clean technologies.

The mobile fuel delivery model also lowers emissions and improves air quality by reducing vehicle miles traveled to fueling stations or infrastructure, which minimizes the fuel burn and associated emissions and environmental impact of fleet operations. Booster’s mobile fuel delivery service reduces fleet emissions by 525 lbs of GHG emissions per vehicle annually, on average.

3. Energy Security

When it comes to adoption of sustainable fleet technologies, access to energy sources and fueling infrastructure presents a major barrier. But security of supply is a crucial element to a successful fleet transition.

Mobile fuel delivery enhances energy security by providing on-site fueling for fleets, reducing the risk of fuel shortages or disruptions. By eliminating a fleet’s reliance on fueling stations or infrastructure, mobile fueling can improve the resiliency and reliability of fleet operations, especially in remote or infrastructure-sparse areas.

Mobile fueling also secures energy supply by enabling access to alternative fuels that may be more secure and resilient than traditional fossil fuels. For example, fleets can use mobile fueling to adopt renewable fuels like renewable diesel, which can be produced domestically from abundant waste feedstocks. Similarly, fleets can use mobile fueling to adopt electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, which can be powered by domestically sourced electricity or hydrogen.

Mobile Fueling for Balanced Fleets

The key to balancing the energy trilemma for fleet fueling lies in resiliency, reliability, and re-imagination of our current fueling systems. Mobile fueling offers the ability to shepherd adoption of sustainable fueling technologies with a reliable, affordable solution. By working with mobile fueling providers, fleets can develop customized fueling plans that meet their specific needs and priorities across their energy transitions while contributing to a more sustainable and secure energy future.

The post How Your Fleet Can Balance the Energy Trilemma appeared first on BOOSTER.

We need a solution for the meantime, while electrification scales, clean energy supply catches up to demand and new alternative engine technologies are developed. For diesel-powered fleets, renewable diesel may be the immediate answer.

What is Renewable Diesel?

Renewable diesel is a substitute for diesel fuel, categorized by the U.S. Department of Energy as an emerging alternative fuel. Made from renewable waste and biomass sources, like soybeans or used cooking oils, renewable diesel is a direct replacement for traditional fossil-based diesel. Due to its chemical similarity to its traditional counterpart, renewable diesel can be immediately used in a diesel engine with no cleaning, transitioning or blending required — you can even mix traditional and renewable diesel in the tank with no issues.

What are the Benefits of Renewable Diesel?

Though renewable diesel functions almost identically to traditional fossil-based diesel, the benefits of the renewable option are plentiful — and not just for the environment.

For one, renewable diesel offers immediate carbon reduction amid an energy transition whose largest solutions (think: electrification) will take years to develop and scale. Although fleet owners may be hesitant to invest in expensive sustainability solutions now given their likely plans to invest in electrification at some point down the road, they can immediately reduce GHG emissions with renewable diesel.

Renewable diesel can deliver up to 70% lower lifecycle emissions compared to petroleum diesel. Other benefits renewable diesel can provide to fleets include better vehicle performance, reduced maintenance, cleaner fuel burning, and no odor. Due to its low “cloud point” and high cetane levels, renewable diesel boasts improved cold-weather performance, quicker cold starts, less noise and better throttle response than traditional diesel. It can also be stored for long periods with no deterioration in quality or water accumulation.

Perhaps its largest selling point: renewable diesel can be used in traditional diesel engines with no upgrades, and can be mixed with traditional diesel as needed, meaning fleet owners and drivers can easily switch back and forth between renewable and traditional diesel.

In other words, the transition to renewable diesel offers significantly lower emissions with no significant commitment, making sustainability the easy choice for fleet customers right now — if they can access it.

How Can Fleet Managers Access Renewable Diesel?

Increasing the widespread adoption of renewable fuels will require making them available and easy to access. Although the U.S. has six operating renewable diesel production facilities producing a combined total of 791 million gallons of fuel per year (as of January 2021), the majority of gas stations fail to offer sustainable fuels. For example, out of 145,000 fuel stations in the United States, the AFDC reports that only 833 carry biodiesel—fewer than 1%.

But with new technologies and business models, fleet managers no longer need to rely on traditional gas station infrastructure to fuel their fleets. Mobile fueling on demand (MFOD) offers fleet managers renewable diesel delivered directly from the terminal to their vehicles, saving the time, money and emissions normally spent by each vehicle going to and from the gas station.

In addition to accessibility constraints, renewable diesel is often expensive to adopt. This is being mitigated in some states through tax credits and production incentives. Currently, renewable diesel is only cost-competitive with traditional diesel in California. This is due to the California Air Resource Board’s (CARB) Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program, which brings down the cost of sustainable fuel production to enable pricing competitive with that of traditional fuels.

To decrease the carbon intensity of the state’s transportation fuel supply and stimulate the production of low-carbon and renewable alternatives, the LCFS program offers credits to producers of certain low-carbon and renewable fuel alternatives. It then requires that producers of traditional fossil-based or carbon-intensive fuels purchase those credits (on an open market from the producers who have gained them) to offset their carbon intensity. This supply and demand system incentivizes production of low-carbon and renewables over fossil-based and carbon-intensive fuels.

Because this system makes renewable diesel in California cost-competitive to traditional diesel, there is little preventing Booster-enabled diesel fleets from switching to renewable diesel, especially as Booster’s MFOD platform makes it so simple. Recognizing this opportunity, and understanding the need to speed decarbonization and drive greater sustainability in transportation, Booster recently transitioned nearly 50 Booster-fueled fleets in Sacramento, San Jose and San Diego — totaling nearly 1,000 fleet vehicles serviced daily — to  renewable diesel, enabling them to slash their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by up to 70%. With this new renewable diesel service offering expansion, Booster now services nearly 100% of its diesel-powered California customers with renewable diesel.

Transitioning with Sustainability

As the energy transition continues, a diverse mix of solutions will be required to maximize potential emissions savings at every stage. While electrification ramps up, more infrastructure is developed and alternative vehicle technologies scale, sustainable fuels can offer immediate reduction of emissions with little to no investment.

As fleet managers of diesel-powered fleets consider ways to immediately lower emissions, they should look to MFOD and renewable diesel as a simple, quick way to gain an immediate boost in both efficiency and sustainability.

The post Decarbonizing Fleets with Renewable Diesel appeared first on BOOSTER.

One of the most effective ways for fleets to decarbonize their vehicles right now is to make the transition to renewable diesel.

What is Renewable Diesel?

At its core, renewable diesel is a direct substitute for diesel fuel and is refined from lower carbon and renewable sources, including vegetable oils and waste cooking oils. Renewable diesel can deliver up to 80% lower lifecycle emissions compared to petroleum diesel. Other benefits renewable diesel can provide fleets include better vehicle performance, reduced maintenance, cleaner fuel burning, and no odor. In short, it provides emissions reductions and better performance for fleet customers right now, if they can access it.

The Booster Solution

Today, less than 2% of gas stations carry sustainable fuels, presenting a supply chain issue for fleets to adopt renewable diesel directly from gas stations. To increase renewable diesel adoption with fleet customers, the opportunity lies with connecting with them directly and removing the burden of multiple trips to the gas station. Booster’s advanced platform meets the fleets where they are, simplifying the energy supply chain to deliver renewable energy from the producer directly to the customer.

Fleets behave differently from consumer vehicles. Fleet vehicles cluster at night during their downtime, they drive in predictable routes, and are more likely to be connected to telematics to optimize their routes. Fleet operations present a huge opportunity to decarbonize last-mile travel, if their fueling is optimized to meet them where they are and take advantage of renewable diesel.

Rapid Renewable Diesel Growth in California

In late 2021, Booster began carrying renewable diesel products, and by the end of November that year, Booster converted half of its fleet customers to renewable diesel in California. Today, Booster’s advanced technology and energy delivery platform has helped convert more than 60% of its customers to renewable diesel, delivering more than 200,000 gallons of renewable diesel to more than 1,400 vehicles in California, cutting CO2 emissions by more than 500,000 lbs. of CO2 every week. In the Bay area alone, Booster has converted 95% of its customers to renewable diesel.

Preparing for the Future

Renewable diesel presents a compelling and viable path to cutting carbon at the last-mile level now. As clean energy infrastructure matures and expands over the next decade, Booster’s energy agnostic Unified Energy Network will be ready to deliver clean energy and further decarbonize the transportation sector through electrification, hydrogen and other clean energies.

The post The Promise and Progress of Renewable Diesel appeared first on BOOSTER.

What if there was an easy way to achieve more efficiency, higher profits, and sustainability goals right now? Energy delivery from Booster has done that very same thing for hundreds of companies, large and small.

Today, businesses are facing immense pressure to execute efficiently amid rapidly growing demand, operational complexity, and unprecedented labor shortages. It’s the perfect storm.

Keeping vehicles fueled is a necessary burden on business that opens your fleet up to additional time, vehicle wear, exposure to the perils of the road, and a higher potential for fraud at the pump. Until today, the only alternative was to keep fueling capabilities onsite, which is expensive, toxic to the environment, and a risky investment considering we are in the midst of a global energy transition.

The pressure to adhere to new environmental standards can introduce added stressors for business owners and operators: like having to choose between an allegiance to business or a focus on sustainability, sourcing renewable fuels when they’re not widely available, or the far-fetched option of fleet electrification, which requires many years, major CapEx, and operational rigidity.

Enter The Easy Button

Having energy delivered directly to your fleet by Booster helps your company fiscally, operationally, and environmentally by removing the need to travel to the gas station ever again.

A partnership with Booster saves your employees time that could be used with customers or other essential functions. Which saves you money. It also saves your vehicles from unnecessary depreciation and your drivers from potential risks associated with being in traffic. Which eliminates 1.9 lbs of CO₂ per gas station trip and also, you guessed it, saves you money.

Thanks to Booster’s mobile model, more customers now have access to biofuels like renewable diesel, which reduces carbon emissions by up to 70% without sacrificing performance or increasing costs. It is a direct swap for conventional diesel, so there is no need to modify or purchase new vehicles. The reduction in carbon emissions alone is worth the simple transition, but we also offer our customers data insights that give business owners unprecedented visibility into these benefits and allows them to clearly track per-gallon pricing.

The Proof is in the Results

Our customers have seen remarkable results from having renewable diesel delivered to their fleets.

19% decline in energy cost per mile

Providing customers with competitive, predictable prices drives down the per-mile cost of fuel.

60% reduction in total vehicle energy management costs

By eliminating trips to the gas station altogether, we’re also eliminating the costs associated with it, including administrative chores.

5%+ increase in profit and service delivered per labor unit

We give customers 20 minutes of labor back per gas station trip, time that can be spent on business development.

25-75% reduction in carbon emissions

By eliminating the 2.2 vehicle miles traveled off-route to the gas station, you save 1.9 lbs of CO2 emissions, PLUS additional CO2 savings with renewable fuel delivery.

If you’d like to improve your company’s efficiency and sustainability while actually boosting profits, contact our consultants at https://boosterusa.com/get-quote-fleet or call us at 1.888.938.3563.

The post Run A Business? It’s Time You Got an ‘Easy Button’ For Your Fleet. appeared first on BOOSTER.

As climate-aware citizens of the world set their sights on net-zero emissions by 2050, it is clear that re-imagining how we generate electricity, how we build things, how we grow our food and how we get around will require bold and collective action by the brightest and most creative scientists, policy-makers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders.

Last month, global leaders and policymakers assembled at COP26 in Glasgow to tackle this exact challenge. Like many of us contemplating how to do our part to address climate change, participants at COP26 faced an interminable list of uncomfortable tradeoffs to evaluate: Who’s going to pay for what? How do we manage the tradeoffs between today and tomorrow? How do we fund new technologies that have longer-term paybacks? These difficult questions may prove the most consequential in modern history.

At Booster, we obsess about many of the same questions. For context, Booster delivers energy to last mile fleet vehicles. These vehicles range from e-commerce delivery vans to consumer rental cars. We recognize that the transportation sector is responsible for nearly a third of greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, reducing vehicle emissions is an important component of the de-carbonization journey.

Many of our customers are faced with the same uncomfortable prospect of making a tradeoff between investing in sustainability or driving business productivity. For most, one step forward on their decarbonization journey equals two steps back on driving free cash flows. This is sustainability fraught with compromise and uncertainty.

With Booster, there’s no need for compromise.

Booster’s last mile energy delivery platform transforms the relationship between decarbonization and efficiency for fleet operators.

How? We deliver renewable, low carbon fuels directly into our customers’ vehicles at prices competitive to their traditional petroleum counterparts. Making the change from conventional to renewables requires no up-front capital expenditures, upgrades, or swapping out vehicles. As a matter of fact, no change is required to realize a potentially huge change in the impact of fleets on the world.

Additionally, many of these renewable fuels can be better for our customers’ engines. Equally important is the fact that we deliver these products to our customers at night during non-productive hours. Doing so enables our customers to avoid costly trips to the gas station, unnecessary vehicle wear and tear, and fuel fraud. Our mobile fueling service actually enhances productivity: that avoided trip to the gas station can result in an extra product or service delivered.

Actions speak louder than blogs.

As a leader in energy delivery, we’ve taken concrete steps toward sustainable energy delivery without compromise.

As a matter of fact, we’ve already converted nearly 100 diesel fleet customers, or around 37% of our fleet roster in California, to renewable fuels, powered by our new strategic partnership with Renewable Energy Group. We’re putting our customers on track to become more efficient and friendlier with the environment, reducing their carbon emissions by 70% overnight. This is the kind of action Booster is interested in taking on for our planet.

With Booster, setting (and achieving!) sustainability goals does not have to come at the cost of propelling your business to new heights. This is sustainability without compromise.

Do you want to make your fleet more sustainable overnight? Contact us for a quote at www.boosterusa.com.

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As world leaders leave the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow with ambitious agendas, the private sector has one thing on their minds: How can we decarbonize quickly?

Reducing emissions can be a challenge for any business, but for last mile delivery fleets, which are projected to grow exponentially, the pressure to make the industry more sustainable is palpable. There are many ways for businesses to decarbonize, but fleets need to do it quickly, while still growing capability to service a supply chain that has boomed over the last few years.

Renewable diesel and related blends have proven to be promising solutions for decarbonizing fleets quickly and economically. Most are cost competitive with conventional diesel and many contain up to 80% less lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions. But availability is a major problem. Only 332 retail fueling stations offer biodiesel (B20 or greater blends) in the entire United States. That amounts to less than 1% of the nation’s total fueling locations, and the availability of renewable diesel is worse.

Today, fleets need no longer be dependent on gas stations and refiners to make renewable fuels accessible. Booster’s industry-leading partnership with the Fortune 1000 corporation Renewable Energy Group (REG), a leading producer and provider of lower carbon fuels, will reinvent and expand the renewable fuel supply chain and solve the lack of access to renewable fuels for last mile fleets.

This first-of-its-kind partnership offers a unique ability to deliver renewable fuels directly from the source to fleet vehicles. One of the greatest benefits of this partnership is that it will let fleets decarbonize easily overnight without incurring additional expenses. Renewable diesel and biodiesel blends are direct swaps for conventional diesel, requiring no vehicle modifications and giving fleet operators the ‘easy button’ for their sustainability, energy reliability, and fuel cost needs that they have never had before.

By leveraging Booster’s expansive logistics footprint plus deep telematics and data integrations, Booster and REG are not only making renewable energy accessible, but also easy and cost effective. Booster offers fleet managers the data and insights required to navigate today’s supply chain constraints and meet increasingly ambitious business optimization targets.

As well as partnering as an exclusive supplier of renewable fuels to Booster. REG has also become an investor in Booster, joining Invus Opportunities, Conversion Capital, Enterprise Holdings Ventures, Madrona Venture Group, Maveron, Perot Jain, L.P., Total Carbon Neutrality Ventures and Vulcan Capital.

Do you want renewable fuels delivered directly to your fleet? Visit www.boosterusa.com

The post Solving Fleet Sustainability Through Mobile Delivery of Renewable Fuels: Booster Partners with REG appeared first on BOOSTER.

The post uncovers radical new numbers that demonstrate how the simple task of going to the gas station has a profound effect on the bottom line of any business that relies on vehicles to get the job done. Before you even click on the link, prepare yourself for quite a surprise. The highlights of the study include these findings:

1. Going to the gas station to keep vehicles fueled takes longer than we thought.
2. Our preferred gas stations are further away than we previously thought.
3. And we’re going more frequently than we should.

The implications for each of these findings are far-reaching. For an in-depth look at the findings featured in the study, click here.

The post The Impact of out-of-route and Refueling Time on Business | BOOSTER appeared first on BOOSTER.

A bit about why we’re doing this. In 2015, Diego, Tyler, and I founded Booster to fix the errand of getting gas. We wanted to improve on the gas station chore in every way. Booster had to be:

• delightfully effortless for customers +
• full-service in a white-glove kind-of way but at reasonable prices found at self-service stations +
• lower strain for our environment and for commuters.

These constraints drove us to do things differently. Among other innovations, the constraints required inventing a proprietary new delivery vehicle that shortened the complex gas supply chain. This is the purple Booster mini-tanker you’ve seen in your parking lot.

Shortening the supply chain is good for economics. It’s a prime reason why we are able to offer free same-day delivery at all our service locations. But a short supply chain is also a smart way to lower strain on the environment. Fewer middlemen and one fewer fuel transfer point means lower vapor emissions and no need for underground fuel storage tanks.

Today we’re going a step further by carbon offsetting our vehicle fleet. This small action is true to our values and part of a larger phased approach to reduce emissions. Just as cutting out middlemen is a smart way to lower environmental strain, we wanted our carbon offset investments to focus on projects that are smart approaches to sustainability. We get excited when every dollar of sustainability is stretched to its maximum.

The projects that we fund are all based in the U.S., leveraging well-established offsetting standards, and delivered via permanent retirement on a public registry to ensure strong additionality. We worked with carbon offset leader 3Degrees and our support currently focuses on emission capture from landfills. We’re pretty excited to support these projects because of how effective they are.

Landfill gas (LFG) projects capture and sequester methane, a greenhouse gas that is about 30x more potent than CO2. Focusing on methane capture has numerous other side benefits that ease strain on environmental and community.

For instance, captured methane can be repurposed as fuel, displacing less sustainable sources. Secondly, just as Booster mitigates the risk from underground fuel tanks which are not in our supply chain, LFG projects mitigate the risk of groundwater pollution resulting from the leaching of toxic chemicals deposited in landfills. Lastly, landfill gas is pretty nasty stuff, and capturing methane gas prevents gas build up underground which can gradually move beneath the surface and potentially cause health issues.

Thank you for your continued support.

Frank Mycroft
Co-Founder and CEO
Booster

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