This fireside chat recap is from FreightWaves’ Net-Zero Carbon Summit on Wednesday.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: The evolution of fossil-free fuel in refrigeration units.
DETAILS: Paul Kroes, the trailer innovation leader at Thermo King and Trane Technologies, discusses the future of sustainability and innovation in refrigeration transportation.
KEY QUOTES FROM PAUL KROES:
“I would say it’s probably no secret that the biggest hurdle for any sort of transition to electric, whether it’s consumer or trucking or anything, is infrastructure, right? We see it everywhere. … The trucking industry also needs that, but the power needs are 10 times what you need in your vehicle at home, so that infrastructure is just a much, much harder problem to tackle.”
“Hybridization, without getting too deep into it, in the refrigerated transport space, really happens for the same reason that it’s happening in the cars and trucks that you can buy or in the consumer space: Range anxiety is a real thing. … The bigger problem is — with electric refrigeration for example, am I going to make it through with my load cold? And that’s arguably a much bigger deal and a much more expensive problem.”
“What hybrid electric allows industry to do is … to dip their toes or their ankles or to their knees into the EV space, to really decarbonizing their fleet without really, ultimately, risking load losses and operational disruptions that can have big impacts — on not just their bottom line — but to their customers, and ultimately to us as consumers.”
“What fleets are finally understanding, after having a lot of demonstrations out there and sometimes failures on electric systems, is ‘I can actually meet my decarbonization goals by just running a diesel engine less,’ and a great way to do that is with a hybrid battery electric system.”