Episode 27: To Electric Vehicles and Beyond - Low-carbon Transportation with Arjun Sarkar - Transcript
Dave Karlsgodt 0:00
Welcome to the campus energy and sustainability podcast. In each episode, we'll talk with leading campus professionals thought leaders, engineers and innovators addressing the unique challenges and opportunities facing higher ed and corporate campuses. Our discussions will range from energy conservation and efficiency to planning and finance, from building science to social science, from energy systems to food systems. We hope you're ready to learn, share and ultimately accelerate your institution towards solutions. I'm your host, Dave Karlsgodt, I'm a principal at Fovea, an energy carbon and business planning firm.
Arjun Sarkar 0:33
I mean, what is it like 22, 23% goes to the rear wheels on a good day. You know, you don't see people standing out at the gas station kicking their tires going, why is this thing only 20% 25% efficient, you know, 75% of my $1 that I put my tank is only be going to the rear wheels. Dang, that's really that's that's just a crying shame.
Dave Karlsgodt 0:56
In this episode, you'll hear my interview with Arjun Sarkar, the sustainable transportation coordinator at the University of California Santa Barbara. I've known Arjun for a while now, and I enjoyed hitting record on what basically felt like a continuation of a conversation he and I have been having for the past couple of years. I started off with a few basic questions around UCSB's campus fleet, but you'll hear us quickly veer off into a number of related tangents about the intersection of transportation, energy and broader sustainability. We'll touch on the history of alternative fuels in the state of California, along with some of the available incentives to help campuses move away from the use of fossil fuels. We'll get into a bit on electric cars, and even hydrogen fuel cells. This conversation actually went quite a bit longer than what you'll hear, we got a little carried away wonking out and diving into the weeds. But with Kaia's help, I think we've been able to edit it down into a respectable podcast length. With all that said, I hope you enjoyed this October 2019 interview with Arjun Sarkar. Well, Arjun it's great to have you on the podcast.
Arjun Sarkar 2:01
Yeah, Dave. It's great to be here. And I'm really excited about talking about transportation and alternative fuels today.
Dave Karlsgodt 2:08
So we have a lot of ground I'd like to cover today, I'd like to get through some of the use of alternative fuels that you guys have been doing there at UCSB for a while, like to get into some of the electric fleet that you're managing now, and maybe if we're, if we have time, let's get into a little bit about hydrogen. But before we get into any of that, can you just give us a brief introduction of of who you are, your role, a little bit about UCSB.
Arjun Sarkar 2:33
So, like you mentioned, my name is Arjun Sarkar. And I've been here at UC Santa Barbara since about 2001. Basically, in the alternative fuels or what I like to call advanced fuel space for Well, really around the mid 90s. I was working with Santa Barbara Metropolitan Transit District on their electric shuttle fleet for about five years. That really was an exciting time and early, very early in, before alternative fuels got popular. Here on the campus, I sit on the sustainable transportation committee, which is kind of focused on scope one and two emissions, really focused on TDM, transportation demand management, and carpooling and all that kind of thing. So that that committee works on that. And also a member of the sustainable transportation working group with which is basically like a system wide committee, that committee focus a lot on transportation demand management, and in 2017, the system wide started a sustainable fleet working group as well. So I sit on that. And back in, I would say, 2004. There was a push in the region to put together a Regional Clean Cities Coalition. Basically the Department of Energy has this program called Clean Cities. There is about 100 Clean Cities throughout the United States. And the our region had worked on this for quite some time. We had a resurgence of interest to put a program together. And we actually partnered with San Luis Obispo, and put together a central coast Clean Cities coalition that was actually recognized by the Department of Energy in 2006. And also, I'm been the coordinator for the Santa Barbara Green Car Show, which is basically a show that is in conjunction with Earth Day. We have over 30,000 people come through that event. So it's kind of like a pet project of mine that I've been involved with for quite some time. I think little bit over 16 years now, so it's it's been fun seeing it go from a few vehicles and to everything under the sun in terms of vehicles and fuels.
Dave Karlsgodt 5:11
Excellent. Well, it sounds like you have your hands full with all sorts of different projects. But let's let's zero it a little bit on Santa Barbara itself or UCSB, can you give us a thumbnail sketch of the fleet that you manage? I imagine there's some, you know, regional travel vehicles and also vehicles for the grounds management but give us a kind of an overview.
Arjun Sarkar 5:30
Yeah, so basically our fleet consists of approximately 362, almost 400 vehicles. What we've been doing is we've been leveraging the lease returns from Nissan actually, after the public has leased those vehicles, we've been able to pick them up you know, purchase them post lease, for a very inexpensive price, we tend to look for that. Around 12 to $15,000. Recently we've been able to do that. In the past we had compressed natural gas vehicles out of that 360 vehicles, about 43% of them are alternative fuels what we consider alternative fuels, the Nissan LEAFs full function electrics, we have approximately 26 of them right now. We have about 20 compressed natural gas trucks and vans. We've been kind of on this diversification of fuel portfolio. So we're looking at biofuels the opportunity to run at five or flex fuel vehicles. So in the mix, we've purchased approximately 80 plus vehicles that are light duty service trucks, like you were saying for our plumbers, electricians, painters, that kind of operation, where we don't have the opportunity to run plug in electric or electric currently where there's not very many vehicles in that space. So we're using our intention would be to use some Gen two biofuels. And I mean, I think at this point, stepping back and really looking at how did we get here as a state and why we're doing this may be a good time to put that in perspective for folks. Senator Fran Pavley was here at our sustainability summit recently, then you may know I mean, she was one of the authors of AB 32, the global warming solution act of '06. I was talking about the alternative fuels space back in the 90s and mid 90s. When we're running compressed natural gas without computer controls, and you had you know, engines blowing up due to the lack of control piston problems, and you know, the trials and tribulations that fleets had to go through before computer controlled vehicles came to play In 99 2000 timeframe, when we gained what we call in the industry onboard diagnostics 2, OBD 2, so when the vehicles became computer controlled, we started to gain the ability to run a lot more alternative fuels, so to speak in terms of ethanol, flex fuel, methanol, moving from diesel to compress natural gas on heavier duty vehicles. And you know, some of those early folks that were doing that is here at Santa Barbara Metropolitan Transit District where I worked for five years. Gary Gleason, the general manager was one of the first board members on the Cal start board, Santa Barbara MTD was the first recipient of a grant to start an electric vehicle program in approximately 95. And they run for over 25 years on electric shuttles. So you see these people Like sunline transit out on Palm Desert where they switched all of their buses from diesel to CNG. overnight. Okay, because it was a dedicated fuel switch that was really revolutionary in the UC system. We had Sherry Lewis down at UCLA. She's rich since retired and she was a big proponent of alternative fuels. Again, when it wasn't popular, so, you know, it was almost like a risk back then, because there were the mandates that we're looking at right now. And greenhouse gas emissions wasn't really a lot of it was regional criteria, pollution that we were trying to mitigate. It's been a long haul in this space, I guess where I'm going with this. It's almost like we're living in a dream to have all of these fundings going towards reducing GHG emissions now, and our ability due to the fact that we have the vehicles and we have the fuel and we don't see the problems that we did in the early days.
Dave Karlsgodt 10:02
Well, so yeah, it sounds like what I'm hearing is that there's both a very long history of alternative fuels in California, but that a lot of that history really had nothing to do with carbon emissions, but perhaps maybe more to do with local air pollution. Or maybe it was a reaction to the oil crises that have come and gone, really finding different ways to power transportation. Not necessarily carbon focused. But I suppose many of the people you've just mentioned probably do care about carbon emissions as well. Right. But that wasn't the reason they were doing this work in the first place.
Arjun Sarkar 10:31
Exactly. I mean, people can visualize Los Angeles and not being able to see the mountains or not even being able to see this tops of the skyscrapers from different places back in the early 70s. And that's, you know, you're hitting the nail on the head. I mean, the Federal Clean Air Act in 1970, and then California having the ability to regulate vehicles before the EPA was formed. And that gives us the ability to have regular On on vehicles, it was local emissions and criteria pollutants and kids not not being able to go outside.
Dave Karlsgodt 11:08
Yeah, I think that's important context, because I think especially some of our younger listeners probably don't remember Los Angeles with that level of pollution or, you know, the days before the electric car really became mainstream.
Arjun Sarkar 11:20
Right. And the impetus exactly like you were saying is that we weren't really focused on GHG emissions yet. What's nice about the space is that everything that we have to utilize right now lowers our GHG emissions as well as criteria pollutants and local emissions.
Dave Karlsgodt 11:39
Got it? That's helpful as a starting point. So let's talk about GHG. Just we've had the honor of working with the UC campuses on the carbon neutrality initiative, which is the the main goal there is scopes one and two to go to zero by 2025, which is more aggressive than the overall zero by 2050. of scopes, one, two and three, right, so transportation fuels owned by the campus are included in scope one emissions because that's a point source emissions, you guys are burning the fuel directly. But when I look at the inventories for the UC campuses, I can't remember I don't know the exact number for the whole system, but it's it's in like the one to 2% range, right? I mean, most of the emissions are, are more directly related to purchase electricity and the burning of gas for buildings, right for cogeneration or for heating, cooling buildings, that kind of thing. So with that in mind, I mean, you're one to 2% of the problem. Help me make the case for having you on the podcast. I mean, we should we just ignore this is a problem. How do you think about that?
Arjun Sarkar 12:37
Right, right, right, since it's so insignificant, the one or 2%? No, I yeah, we do get I do get that. I think really where the state let's just take it from the state's perspective. 40% and Fran Pavley hit on this exact thing, the transportation sector is a tough sector to reduce for GHG emissions reductions. It's a tough one. It's one of the only sectors in the state in terms of natural gas and electric that since 2015, it's been increasing in GHG emissions. And the projections aren't really that great. So a business case as usual for California to get to the 2050 full-on California goals of 80% reduction in GHG emissions, the transportation sector is pulling us down. So that's why the state is so interested in this space and funding in terms of the California low carbon fuel standard. In terms of the credits they're giving, and the funding that I've talked about the Global Leadership Council, which is working on these initiatives has kept transportation somewhat a focus and if you include scope three emissions, the commuter issue is not two to 3%. If you don't, it's huge.
Dave Karlsgodt 13:57
40% or it can even be larger at some of the community. College inventories I look at it can be 70% of their emissions. It's a big deal.
Arjun Sarkar 14:04
Exactly. And and, you know, kind of continue on this. I mean, if you look at our Institutes of transportation, say at UC Davis, or UC Irvine, who Jack Brouwer down at Irvine is really focused on the hydrogen and fuel cells stuff and, you know, UC Davis is works so closely with Dan Sperling at the Air Resource Board, and I think we, as a state higher Institute of learning and whatnot really have the ability to be an example and a leader in this space. And I believe we are I mean, if we go back, I mean, here's the perfect place to put this in. I looked at our from 2015 UC Santa Barbara here we used about 130,000 gallons of gasoline, say on campus and here in 2019 we're down to a About 95,000 gallons. So unlike the state where we're increasing here at UCSB, and throughout the UC system, we're decreasing and gasoline and diesel usage and increasing alternative fuels. So, you know, we're making some progress. And there's quite a bit of excitement on the campuses. And I think that part of it is because people see field drive vehicles on a daily basis.
Dave Karlsgodt 15:29
Yeah, they they understand what they are. They don't they're not so into heat exchangers, for example. They don't really know what that is. Right?
Arjun Sarkar 15:36
Exactly. You put up solar panels they see but energy efficiency, it's all behind the wall. So it's a great opportunity to talk about engaging people with the different alternative fuels and what are they going to go do the commuters they have already felt like they're used to driving hybrids, electrics, various types of fuels. So you have these operators that then go, Hey, well, I can go to the natural gas station downtown by a Honda Civic and pay a buck $92 a gallon equivalent for natural gas at a 24 hour access, they start to learn about electric vehicles and the opportunity to use them as the commuter. So then those people are spokes people, and they become the commuter that drives the plugin, Chevy Volt, the PHP, you know, plug in hybrid, and then they're an advocate out there to their department and then you see them the other ones buying the Chevy Volt, the Nissan LEAF and it just is kind of like a ripple effect.
Dave Karlsgodt 16:42
Yeah, so basically what I'm hearing is you've got you are estate agents here, you know, part of the funded through the state, as well as you can have these relationships with the state agencies themselves. So you're probably the place most likely going to be the test bed. Let's talk about though. I mean, at the end of the day, you guys as a department Have bottom lines and, you know, budgets that you need to contend with how many of these alternative fuel vehicles that we've talked through our experiments, pilot projects, you know, things that maybe don't pay for themselves, but are there for the learning? And how many of them are now decisions you make? Because it's actually cheaper to run them? Like you alluded to the, you're buying the the leaf sun least return. So I assume that's much cheaper than buying a brand new car, you know, just to talk me through some of the financial decision making at the department level, maybe taking advantage of those those credits or incentives, but also just keeping the cost down? Because I'm sure that's a concern.
Arjun Sarkar 17:36
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you're you're hitting the nail on the head in terms of where the rubber meets the road and in the meetings about what the acquisition is going to be price and the acquisition is a huge factor. When we're comparing how you kind of alluded to the Nissan LEAF. The acquisition was easy for the decision. Due to the fact that it was the same, if not lower cost, then to replace that sidin that was, you know, 12 years old or something like that. And there was a straight switch out sedan to sedan easy decision. Well, when you come into a space, like a lot of our FM or facilities management and our housing folks need to get their job work done is a van or a truck. So those are the ones that aren't necessarily available in plug in electric or electric currently, I mean, there's some out there, but realistically, the OEMs have not brought out a product, it's ready to go that where we've gone with that is to be sensitive. We have done the E 85. Or the flex fuel vehicle option, which has no cost increase associated with the same cost as the gasoline you just put it in the spec, and you get the flex fuel option. Okay, well, we have those vehicles now. It's time Really for us to go from this 90, you know, a 95,000 gallon a year situation where we may be able to get a Gen two biofuel, if we actually try to specifically get a fuel provider to guarantee us a certain fuel, we could I mean, we'll see some reductions. I mean, where I'm going with this is a 33 to 50% GHG emission reduction is not that difficult. And what the opportunity here with is, is with the low carbon fuel standard and the federal fuel credit, those fuels are actually lower costs than your traditional gasoline gallon equivalent.
Dave Karlsgodt 19:41
Yeah. So what are what are some of the specific things that the compressed natural gas or ethanol or what are some of the fuels you're talking about?
Arjun Sarkar 19:49
I talked about the Department of Energy Clean Cities program, right? Well, they have a website, the alternative fuels data center, and that tool, isn't it? resource that is just available for everybody. And it's just got a plethora of information on it. So it's it's a great resource where we see the largest reductions in California right now. And the most advanced or alternative fuels usage is in renewable diesel, which is not biodiesel. You know, bio diesel is it's a blending stock to put in diesel. And almost all diesel in California has about 5% biodiesel, if people don't know that. So we run about 5% biodiesel in our diesel in California, renewable diesel is processed up to a standard that meets the diesel specification. You know, we don't have a transit operation here on campus. So we don't go through much diesel To tell you the truth. We don't have a bunch of diesel vehicles
Dave Karlsgodt 20:48
that's running through the city runs at the City of Santa Barbara runs the transportation system or the regional transportation system for that area, I suppose. Right?
Arjun Sarkar 20:57
Yeah. It's it's an agency in itself. So it's a regional transportation agency, Santa Barbara, Metropolitan Transit District is what they're called. And we're at where I'm kind of going with this is that all of these fuels that are available are significant, but the ones that are making the biggest dent in California and have an opportunity, here's the drop in replacement fuels, right? If you think about upstream from the vehicle, if you give me scope, one electricity that is zero emission or carbon neutral, and I plug in my fleet vehicle, I don't necessarily need to worry about where electricity is because it's going to meet my 2025 goal. Again, if I pull from my pipeline, and I'm doing renewable, we talked about renewable diesel but now we're talking about renewable natural gas, what we call our energy. If I pull our energy credits out of the pipeline, and I put it in my truck or van or car, and I run it by 2025 That energy is going to be carbon neutral. So looking at that, you know, electric compressed natural gas, my Gen two biofuels drop in replacement, and my renewable diesel, the multi fuel portfolio looks really good to get me close to a 2025 goal, you know, and obviously, the last percentages are are going to be the toughest. Sure, but you could buy offsets for the last bits that you're not able to switch out with one of those other alternatives. It sounds like it's already baked into the plan because we we know that the transportation sector is just a lot more expensive than energy efficiency or a plethora of other opportunities. And it's not that big of a wedge in the pie,
Dave Karlsgodt 22:47
right. So at a certain point, rather than buying some fancy truck that's $300,000 more expensive than the alternative or something ridiculous like that. You just buy some offsets for that last bit that you can
Arjun Sarkar 22:57
exactly and the limited funding like is going to go to a larger wedge of the campuses GHG emissions, where $300,000 could we could make a bigger dent with that funding. So we have to be creative in our pathway to make these leaps.
Dave Karlsgodt 23:13
Right. Let me ask a question though. You alluded to the fact that compressed natural gas which is not renewable, right, but is just a different fuel than buying regular gasoline or diesel. And I assume that's that's usually a switch for diesel. Is that right? You could use that in buses. Y'all answer that first and then I have a follow on for it.
Arjun Sarkar 23:31
Yeah, yeah. So the renewable natural gas or see or just regular, let's say regular compressed natural gas, the same gas that comes what I tell people same gas that comes out of your stove, we compress that to about 3600 psi, and then we run it into our vehicles for 20 years. You could get the Honda Civic and natural gas you could get f 150s and natural gas. A lot of people don't realize these vehicles came factory because they went to fleets, your natural Your gas company or your government fleet or like us, or something like that.
Dave Karlsgodt 24:04
So that it Yeah, they don't advertise on Sunday football, for example.
Arjun Sarkar 24:08
Exactly, you know, they don't make huge runs of them. So when we're moving to renewable natural gas, this is bio gas that has been derived from either a wastewater treatment plant, landfill gas, dairy gas, from the manure from dairy cattle, any kind of bio gas that is being created, and now, with the landfills in California being constrained how much material can go into the landfills by law. These bio digesters, they're processing this green waste material. By law, it can't go in the landfill. So the bio gas is almost like an extra benefit because they technically have to do something with the green waste that's going into the landfill. So they process that In that processing, they get another option to make renewable energy credits with the bio gas like CR&R down in Perris, California, is a great example of that, where they're taking their bio digestion, their bio gas to go to the waste hauler trucks directly. And then the remainder of the fuel. It's one of the only places that least right now that the remainder goes into the pipeline in California. So it gets cleaned up to pipeline quality and then gets injected into the line.
Dave Karlsgodt 25:33
And at that point, it's literally the same thing, right? It's like methane,
Arjun Sarkar 25:36
methane. Yep, exactly.
Dave Karlsgodt 25:38
Well, so so I guess my question there and I probably have similar questions on the other fuels as well. When it shows up for you. Are you just literally typing into the to the pipeline and then buying credits for the fact that somebody else put it in? There's no difference in the gas. I think you've already said that right. But how much more expensive is it to buy renewable natural gas and do you have some program or incentive to use that as a as an institution? Are you just paying more for it? Presumably it's more expensive than traditional gas. So maybe not it? I mean, depends depends on where it's coming from.
Arjun Sarkar 26:09
So I mean, it's a great question. We have 20 vehicles, and we're light duty fleet, right? And that we have, we're a one mile circumference campus or whatnot. So we aren't traveling a lot. So we aren't putting a lot of throughput. So make long story short, we aren't currently buying RNG the renewable natural gas credits as we move forward, we most likely will where we see it is in larger transit fleets. And the reason being is because with the renewable energy credits and the federal credit, the cost is actually lower for these fuels.
Dave Karlsgodt 26:47
To the final person purchasing it right, like to the transit agency.
Arjun Sarkar 26:51
Yeah, to the final customer. Exactly.
Dave Karlsgodt 26:53
Because it's being subsidized or because it's actually cheaper?
Arjun Sarkar 26:56
Because it's somewhat subsidized. I don't know if I wouldn't Use the word subsidized what California recognizes is that the transportation sector is is a tough sector to crack. So they end up giving the very high value to renewable natural gas to be leveraged in the transportation sector. The renewable energy credit is the highest value of renewable energy credits that you can get, the end user ends up getting a benefit for many, many years, there's been a federal tax credit that comes and goes that they get even for non tax paying agencies like the transit authority or us or whatnot, we can get a 50 cent credit on natural gas per gallon equivalent, just in quick numbers, natural gas, if you have your own infrastructure and you're compressing it on site, maybe about $1.20, it's just a kind of a rule of thumb now if I get the 50 cent credit from the feds Say it's it's a it's a window where it's available, kind of like the funds that go to win generation and solar or whatever, this is my credit. And then you get the renewable natural gas credit. So you get a few other credits, where some agencies could be running renewable natural gas below 50 cents a gallon equivalent.
Dave Karlsgodt 28:24
Wow. And what is what is a gallon of gas or diesel in California these days?
Arjun Sarkar 28:28
Probably like right now it's probably sitting at what three at like four bucks a gallon out there.
Dave Karlsgodt 28:34
Wow, okay. I'm sure that'll give a heart attack to our friends in Texas or in Montana. But
Arjun Sarkar 28:38
yeah, so let's just say it's between three fit, let's just give it a $3.50 or something like that. All these prices fluctuate. So that's another thing is like people ask, Well, how much is this? How much credit you're going to get what? You know, it's a day to day it's a changing landscape out there.
Dave Karlsgodt 28:56
But But okay, so you're saying that to a transit agency. In the state of California, if they're set up to do it, they've got the infrastructure to do it, their marginal cost for that fuel can be as cheap as 50 cents. So you're talking like the 1960s all over again or something like that. I don't think we've seen gas that cheap for a long time. Right?
Arjun Sarkar 29:13
Yeah, and on that note, how can you say no to that when you're running hundreds and hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel, you know, and where we're at as a state, California with all of this transportation demand, there is more net renewable natural gas coming into the marketplace to where all the transportation fuel in the state of California that's running natural gas is renewable natural gas. In our plan on the UCS plan, it's really kind of looking at it as a bridge fuel. So that market demand the signal it's sending is saying we want more natural gas buses, trucks vans to run because there's this market out there. That wants to feed the gas in. And we're making markets in other places in the country because they're building these bio gas facilities for the California market. So we're capturing methane that would otherwise escape.
Dave Karlsgodt 30:16
Alright, so let me let me just summarize what I'm hearing here. So you're saying one as landfills stop taking things that can be digested, there's more methane being captured in you know, like a bio digester rather than a landfill which you can capture the methane off the landfill. And we've talked about that in Episode 22. And also one of our friends at Central College they're they're doing some work in a landfill out in in Pella, Iowa. But rather than letting it get to the landfill at all You're saying because California is not allowing that anymore, you have to digest it. So there's, there's this new gas supply coming online that's renewable. Second thing is you can clean that up, put it in the pipeline and drop it into existing things. So that could be used to like get cogeneration facilities or and heating or cooking Are there any other fields like ethanol or some of the other bio biofuels? Are those generally cost equivalent? Or is are those even really worth talking about? I know ethanol is kind of got a bad rap because it sometimes can take more energy to make it than and actually get out of it. And
Arjun Sarkar 31:13
right, when we talk about alternative fuels, I really point people back to the alternative fuels data center for the deal he because the deal we, you know, it kind of went in '92, '93 timeframe, they wanted to give a carrot and the stick to, you know, more carrot, I would say more carrots and sticks. So the deal we formed the Clean Cities program, so that fleets could participate and meet some of these goals of fuel displacement. So what really Clean Cities is about is about fuel displacement, and energy security.
Dave Karlsgodt 31:52
It's not about carbon necessarily, I think is what you mean,
Arjun Sarkar 31:55
right? In early days. It wasn't really about carbon though. We find out I mean, If we are if we're in a situation in California that we are creating so much renewable electricity at two o'clock in the afternoon on a summer day, or a lot of the days now we need to figure out, you know, renewable energy at this point is almost like a waste stream. We need to think about using energy in different way. We're so focused, which we still should be on energy efficiency. I'm not trying to go away from energy efficiency, but at these peak times of generation, we need to really strategize battery electrics plugging in to the grid at certain times. They should be being pinged with an app. It tells them please please plugin
Dave Karlsgodt 32:44
Okay, big bed vehicles are a way of he needed for propulsion, but you might as well stitches when you fill it up as a choice potentially.
Arjun Sarkar 32:50
Exactly. Exactly. So you know, you you see we started by talking about Los Angeles in the in the smog, we still have the issues, but the Let's talk about California as a car culture. I mean, we are a car culture. And for me being in fleet and alternative fuels, and in this space, it's important to be relevant to stay relevant to be part of the car culture. And like you just said, thinking about the demand of energy that we push through on a daily basis, California to make goods and services movement. I mean, the port of La in Long Beach bring in, I think it's like 60% to 70% of all of the shipping for the United States comes through the Port of Long Beach and LA and that's why, you know, Toyota is down there, and all these different alternative fuels are down, you know, in that space, working to mitigate some of that and see what we can really accomplish. But where I was going is so if you look at the energy that the transportation sector uses Is as Amory Lovins might talk about, like as the potential or as something positive, because it's a demand that people are paying money for, that we can leverage. So if we can make inroads in the business of reducing their costs to where they can't say no, they are going to take from the advanced fuel smorgasbord.
Dave Karlsgodt 34:25
Okay. So how are electric is doing in that realm? Is it like you said, if you can get a leaf at least return you can buy it cheaper than a regular car so that your first cost is lower. But what about operating the vehicle? Is that also lower?
Arjun Sarkar 34:37
I mean, the public is starting to catch on if you're out there, and you live in California, and you're not taking advantage of this space with electric vehicles, because there's such an easy pathway. If I'm a So Cal Edison or a PG&E customer, I pick up the vehicle for eight or 9010 15,000 wherever your price point is. A used one, Edison's giving a rebate of $1,000. And you go on your app and you look for free charging stations in your area, or Tesla's model where it's prepaid or all of this, the sand is shifting, you do not need to pay for transportation fuels at this time in history, if you live in California,
Dave Karlsgodt 35:22
and you're an early adopter, that makes sense. Yeah. Do they give free car fresheners to or just?
Arjun Sarkar 35:28
Well, I mean, when we talk about free, it's always it's always an interesting thing. I mean, we in transit, we always talked about get people on the bus and move that 80% reduction by 2050. It's a prepaid unlimited ridership situation, because maybe you pay taxes and everything like that. So I'm not trying to say there's free fuel out there. But if you're in a commute mode, where you're commuting 30 miles, you know, one way to work and you're driving a regular sedan right now and I throw you in a Chevy Volt Or a plug in hybrid or an electric and I give you the opportunity to reduce your costs. Would you rather be giving the funds a certain amount to the gas station or an oil petroleum situation? Or would you rather be charging at two o'clock in the afternoon when you're at work to go back home with 100% renewable, and that opportunity is available to everyone today. It's not in the future. These cars are warrantied certified, they have the backing of everything they the manufacturers have stepped up to the plate. And as an industry, we're ready to go. And we are ready for the public to take advantage of these opportunities like no other time in history in those vehicles that were 30 and $40,000 vehicles three years later, have a depreciation of so much due to the incentivize monies that were given to the vehicle up front. So that 10,000 incentivized vehicle, that incentive follows it. And the second owner gets to capture almost a 50% reduction in cost in three in three to four years.
Dave Karlsgodt 37:11
So in other words, the original car was $35,000. But since they got $10,000 off, they don't really think of it as a $35,000 car that think of as a $25,000 car so they use it for a couple of years. And so if they burn it down to $12,000 car, they get rid of it on their books, that's fine. It's not that big a deal to them. But you know, exactly. Okay.
Arjun Sarkar 37:30
Exactly. And that's where the marketplace is because those go out into the marketplace in terms of at auctions and whatever the market will bear is really, you know, a benchmark of what that value of the car is there are as it comes out, people are taking some losses on it. So if you live in California and you're not taking advantage of some of this even up that that upfront costs, like a new vehicles, if you're a new vehicle purchaser, you can take advantage of that new vehicle. The long extend the lead, you know, how often do you get an eight year hundred thousand or eight year 80,000 mile warranty on a power train up front for no cost? It's unheard of. So we're in this space in California and some other states, you know that states that have followed us the 10 states that sometimes follow us, it's hard to say no to this stuff, if you're educated and you know what you're looking at.
Dave Karlsgodt 38:27
Yeah. Now my neighbor actually just got actually a one. My neighbor on one side just bought a Tesla. He's a fireman, which was kind of cool that he could afford a Tesla. So that was great. And then on the other side, is they bought a new leaf. I thought it was a new leaf. And it turned out it was one of those least returns that you're talking about. So and I think they paid 12 $14,000 for something in that range. So
Arjun Sarkar 38:46
Wow, that's excellent. That's awesome. That's great. And I were quick to follow the work at home so I heard the drive so it's hard to justify doing anything to the car even moving it but that certainly will be our next move. I'm sure. We here on campuses not just here. But on our campuses. Our trucks don't drive that far. Right, they sit and they move from one spot to the next. And then they do their job. And they it's such a small campus that we don't have the ability to capture, unlike a transit agency that can really have a huge amount of savings. So we're a little constrained because we don't have as much throughput of fuel per vehicle. Part of it is for me when a state agency doesn't pay the state fuel taxes, and it's almost like incentivizing to use a fuel because we get gasoline at a lower cost than the market outside. You're not paying state tax on it, right? Because we aren't paying all of the taxes and we aren't the UC system or campuses aren't currently putting a carbon tax on fuel. I think we need to at least consider a true carbon tax on fuel as a system because without somebody Kind of added pressure or signal the departments. It's just another tool in the toolbox if Pavley and if everybody's saying the transportation sector is such a hard GHG emission to reduce the transportation sector should you know fuel fuel needs to be looked at?
Dave Karlsgodt 40:18
Well, so let me play that back to you, you said when you total up vehicle miles traveled for some of the maintenance trucks, for example, on a campus, they're kind of like my car because I work at home I sometimes I drive to the grocery store, but a lot of times if the car doesn't move for days at time, and your trucks are are doing a couple of miles, I'd probably idling so you probably have some local air pollution issues with that. But justifying it from savings, a fuel savings perspective, you just don't burn enough fuel to ever save any money on it because there's not going through it. So the question is to electrify those cars, you get the benefit by the distance and the delta between what you pay for fuel and what you don't have to pay for fuel. But if you don't pay for fuel anyway, it's hard to justify is that is that a good summary?
Arjun Sarkar 40:59
Exactly. Exactly if my truck let's just put it down to the truck if a truck drives 2000 miles a year, or 1500 miles a year, and the battery electric equivalent, let's say Ford or Chevy or one of the big manufacturers come out with the truck and it has a what $15,000 premium, you know, drive enough to pay for that, right? It's very hard until those come out and then go into a different market. Now there's a few opportunities where maybe we do have somebody that travels quite a bit but that's the ones these Tuesday's that's not the fleet in general, when the medium duty or kind of upper light duty vehicles, your regular service trucks come out PHP plug in hybrid, what will be the adoption rate for us and how are we going to convince people to make that choice and it's gonna be a hard one and that's why the drop in going back to the drop in fuel replacement that I can get a 50% GHG reduction overnight. It really looks good.
Dave Karlsgodt 42:05
Yeah, so maybe maybe in 10 years when the Ford F 150 has been out for a while and you guys can get the least returns of those similar to your leaves today, maybe it's a different story because your first cost will come down,
Arjun Sarkar 42:15
or where the state will come out with them. They are coming out with this they have the H VIP program, which is basically for fleets and governing fleet so they know where the state understands the constraints that we're in. So we would then need to go after specific grant money to equalize the cost and that's what we would have to do for for the department's it would need to be an approximately same cost to them. That's not too much of a stretch. It's just when the vehicles come out. We'll see how that can play.
Dave Karlsgodt 42:50
Okay, so today you've got the advanced fuels as you call them. As an option. You've got the electric vehicles especially for the you know the longer distance traveling and sedan type cars. Those worked really well. I know some of the transportation fleets like UCLA had now has a electric bus. So some of that's coming, but you just don't happen to manage those types of vehicles at this time.
Arjun Sarkar 43:09
Exactly. Exactly. They have the electric of BYD. They have some BYD there and at UC-Irvine they switched out all their buses to be electric buses. I think they have 20 of them or something.
Dave Karlsgodt 43:22
Okay, okay. Well, let's let's end on. I remember back maybe 2005 ish, I'm not sure there was a big talk of hydrogen as the future. And you know, at the time it was during the Bush administration. And it was kind of a joke. It was like, I think there was a Simpsons episode about it as well. Where it was this idea of hydrogen is going to save the day. And we didn't need to worry about wind and solar or efficiency or fuel standards during those things, because eventually hydrogen was going to come in and save the day. So I never, you know, kind of forgot about it for a while. And then a couple years ago, I went to the University of California Santa Santa Barbara for a conference and lo and behold, I mean You and you give me a ride in a hydrogen fuel cell car, which I thought was very cool. Tell us a little bit about your car. And then let's talk about where you see that future and how hydrogen may fit in to that future.
Arjun Sarkar 44:12
Yeah, so my car is a Honda 2017 Honda clarity fuel cell obviously, earlier I talked about compressed natural gas and compressed natural gas, we run at 3600 pounds per square inch psi. And the hydrogen cars have created this new standard which is 10,000 psi. Now that's to be able to get the range from this. So you have your Toyota MRI, your Honda clarity, you have your various manufacturers doing it. I came from a little over 12 years of compressed natural gas, dedicated natural gas driving Ford trucks mainly as my personal vehicle and we in Santa Barbara are an exporter of natural gas. So I'm like well, domestic energy and our account. resource. Why do I want to support liquid petroleum industry, you know, not just because of emissions things, but in terms of energy security and what we have to go through in order to secure our energy in regions all over the world in order to transport our goods and services and do what we do in the United States. So I've been writing hydrogen for two and a half years. And my thought process on that is really about energy storage. We want to do 100% renewable energy to hydrogen, store it for long periods of time and use it in not an internal combustion engine. That's, that's peak efficiency. 30% efficient, nope. You know, it really is a solid state future of energy production.
Dave Karlsgodt 45:45
Well describe the process.
Arjun Sarkar 45:46
It's a battery that all you need to do is I mean, you can look at the fuel cell stack, which is a membrane and you flow, hydrogen on one side, and oxygen on the other. I don't carry oxygen. onboard, they pull it in from the atmosphere. But we have stationary fuel cells used all over the place as well. You have the hydrogen oxygen, you make an electron, and your output is electricity, heat and water. And if you've got your hydrogen from renewables, you're golden. You start to think about the future and being able to be 70% efficiency. What's really nice about the clarity platform is that it comes in battery electric, like a Tesla fuel cell, which I have hydrogen fuel cell and plug in hybrid, like a volt, the same exact car. So now we're at Honda is going to have data on all three platforms, different fuel types, they'll be able to extrapolate all this stuff, but at the end of the day, regardless if you're running a Tesla you brought up the Tesla when I go into fuel up my clarity that takes me about three to five minutes That's to fill that up. And then I get another 300 350 mile range to give somebody the experience of what they're used to in their duty cycle, the fuel cell can really give that experience of they aren't giving anything up.
Dave Karlsgodt 47:16
Our 2040 Indy 500 probably not going to be at battery electric with superchargers. It's more likely to be a hydrogen race.
Arjun Sarkar 47:24
It may, but I think we want to continue a multi portfolio of fuels because there's going to be reasons for renewable natural gas because they're, they're creating bio gas for other reasons. It's almost like a product of something else. I mean, the dairy industry, so we need to use all this renewable power and the transportation sector is a great place to use it in.
Dave Karlsgodt 47:49
Right. Okay. Just a couple of final questions, which would be, you know, if you're talking to other folks in sustainability that are trying to interface with their transportation folks or other people that are in Transportation fleet managers at different campuses, what are a couple of things you might suggest to get them further down this path? I mean, you guys have been working on this for a long time. I'm sure other campuses have too. But what are some key points or key bits of advice you'd give them?
Arjun Sarkar 48:14
You know, it's really about institutionalizing policy policies and leveraging policies that are already existing on the books, you come into a situation where maybe a fleet and I'm not saying just in the UC system, but just into a fleet, where there's all these different policies that aren't being flashed around are held up and say, you know, we've already been being told to do this, the old days where people were putting their own necks on the line has kind of gone and there's enough reason and enough knowledge base out there to really get these programs moving forward. The folks in fleet tend to be very supportive of each other and have programs in the Clean Cities world in the fleet world. If you land in a in a place like that, and you're getting you're putting your toe in the pond of alternative fuels or advanced fuels, just look around and you'll find especially if you're in California, you'll find clean city coordinators and fleet managers that are just ready to help and guide and support programs of all types and sizes.
Dave Karlsgodt 49:29
All right, well, that leads well into my last question which is if people want to get in touch with you personally what's the best way for them to reach out
Arjun Sarkar 49:36
Email's great, my email address is arjun.sarkar, that is a r j u n dot Sarkar, S a r k a r@ucsb.edu.
Dave Karlsgodt 49:51
Very good. I think we've, as you said, we've pedal to the metal or there's all sorts of car analogies we could end with here.
Arjun Sarkar 49:57
Exactly, exactly. No. I Well, I mean, I think we're on a path in California. And we need everybody to jump on this bus.
Dave Karlsgodt 50:08
There you go.
Arjun Sarkar 50:10
And it really is about like us coming together, leveraging the fuels, and reducing the amount of vehicles that are being used in California. So we effectively use the these alternative fuels and when you put zero emission vehicles, in conjunction with transit, it's just the winning match.
Dave Karlsgodt 50:33
Excellent. Well, I will look forward to another lap around the city of Santa Barbara and the fuel cell car perhaps at the next conference down in Santa Barbara. But thanks a lot for your time.
Arjun Sarkar 50:44
And I look forward to that today.
Dave Karlsgodt 50:47
That's it for this episode. A special thanks to Kaia Findlay who edited and produced this episode. If you'd like to learn more about Arjun or any of our episodes, please visit our website at Campus energy podcast. com We've got a new transcript feature there, which is pretty cool. You can actually listen to the episode and watch the words as they fly by. So check that out. You can also connect to us on Twitter, we're at energy podcast, or subscribe to our page on LinkedIn. If you just search for a campus energy and sustainability podcast. If you have comments or questions, we have a comments feature on the website or just drop us an email or to one of those other means I've already mentioned. We always like hearing from listeners and would love additional show ideas for 2020. We don't charge for this show, but if you like what you hear and would like us to produce more, please just consider sending a link to a friend or telling somebody about the show. As always, thanks for listening.