ATA Highlights the Trucking Industry's Carbon Reduction Efforts on Earth Day
ARLINGTON, Va., April 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As Americans celebrate Earth Day, the American Trucking Associations (ATA) highlights its commitment to reducing carbon emissions through initiatives that set the industry towards a more sustainable future. In 2008, ATA unveiled a series of recommendations that can reduce fuel consumption by 86 billion gallons and CO2 emissions by 900 million tons for all vehicles over 10 years.
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"Our proposals are practical, reasonable, and doable. They make environmental sense, and they make common sense," said ATA President and CEO Bill Graves. "ATA's involvement with programs such as the Environmental Protection Agency's SmartWay Program is reducing the amount of emissions that come from trucks."
The report, Trucks Deliver a Cleaner Tomorrow, includes six key recommendations to reduce fuel consumption and addresses the impact of these activities on the environment. They are the equivalent of eliminating the CO2 generated by 9.6 million Americans for one year -- roughly equal to the population of the Chicago metropolitan area. The recommendations are displayed on www.trucksdeliver.org, together with full details of the trucking industry's new commitments on sustainability:
- Set governors on new trucks to limit speeds to no more than 65 mph and reduce the national speed limit to 65 mph for all vehicles.
- Reduce engine idling.
- Increase fuel efficiency by encouraging participation in the U.S. EPA SmartWaySM Transport Partnership Program.
- Reduce congestion by improving highways, if necessary by raising the fuels tax and dedicating that revenue to fixing key congestion points.
- Use more productive truck combinations.
- Support national fuel economy standards for trucks.
Expanding highway capacity around our nation's worst traffic bottlenecks is one way to reduce fuel consumption and emissions that come from nondiscretionary idling. ATA also supports policies that reduce speed on our highways to 65 mph, technologies to reduce discretionary idling, and policies that promote more productive trucks and further improvements to diesel engine efficiency.
The trucking industry recommends that shippers and motor carriers also join the U.S. EPA SmartWay Transport Partnership Program in order to achieve greater national gains in fuel efficiency and carbon reduction. The program's goal is to look beyond the fuel economy of individual vehicles and use new management techniques and technologies to increase the amount of cargo moved per gallon of fuel for the whole fleet.
ATA is committed to a bold sustainability program that is having an immediate impact on the environment, reducing fuel consumption by up to 86 billion gallons and thus reducing the carbon footprint of all vehicles by nearly a billion tons over the next ten years.
The American Trucking Associations (www.truckline.com) is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of other trucking groups, industry-related conferences, and its 50 affiliated state trucking associations, ATA represents more than 37,000 members covering every type of motor carrier in the United States. Follow ATA on Twitter @TruckingMatters (www.twitter.com/truckingmatters), or become a fan on Facebook (http://tinyurl.com/y4qwp6h).
SOURCE American Trucking Associations
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