EPRI
Moderator James Ellis is VP Partnerships and Project Development at Seven States. Michael McDonald is Sr. Director of Sustainability & Government Affairs at UPS Corp. Dave Schaller is Industry Engagement Director at the North American Council for Freight Efficiency. Andrew Papson is Advisor on Transportation Electrification at Southern California Edison.
EPRI's Electrification 2021 Virtual Forum Series event Frontiers of e-Mobility featured comprehensive collaboration and informative exchanges to enable progress on efficient, equitable, electric transportation solutions.
The first large electric fleets in your community will be local delivery. When there are up to one thousand electric vans in one facility, the speed and scale of these deployments will create tremendous momentum requiring new solutions for utility planning, charging, and resiliency. This EPRI panel examined that mad dash for the last mile. Enjoy these excerpts.
Moderator and VP Partnerships and Project Development, Seven States, James Ellis: We've seen massive growth in the last year with the pandemic and e-commerce. With the cell phone and the apps, we can order things that ten years ago took five to seven days and we'd have to go pick it up.
But now it's at our doorstep within a couple hours in some cases. Sustainability is starting to play a bigger role and net carbon zero with sustainability goals, with corporations setting net zero by 2040.
This is driving significant requirements for electricity as a transportation fuel and net carbon zero last mile delivery makes a lot of sense. We're breaking some barriers, but to get to net carbon zero, there's going to be significant investment required. It's a massive goal. I'm looking forward to your comments.