Ford Pro is the Perfect Partner on the Journey to Carbon Net Zero
Clear Channel is an Out-of-Home media company. We focus on media and infrastructure and we have an ethos of being a platform for brands and a platform for good. So we not only provide effective advertising solutions, but we also want to make a positive impact on society and the environment. I’m Tessa.
I’m the sustainability data manager at Clear Channel and I am responsible for collecting and analysing our carbon emissions data across scopes one, two and three. So Clear Channel have been counting our carbon emissions data for quite a long time now, since 2008.
So we’ve got a long track record of being a sustainable company and we also have an internal target of being carbon net zero across scopes one and two by 2030. I count the carbon emissions data for our vehicle fuels.
So I’m looking at the different fuels that we use and how we can reduce those fuels by that 90 to 95% and go fully electric. So we have quite an ambitious target of 2030 and that shows that we take our carbon reduction seriously. Hi, Glenn. Nice to see you again.
Yeah, good, you? Good. Thanks. Excellent. This is Glenn and he’s our fleet manager for Clear Channel UK. So I’ve been talking about sustainability and why decarbonisation is important for us as a business. What does it mean for you as a fleet manager? Decarbonisation, I think, is important for fleets,
Particularly as much as our vehicles operate in what is rapidly becoming more and more Ultra Low Emission Zones. Local authorities are introducing them all over the country, for us, where that’s where most of our vehicles operate. So it’s not just about emissions and CO2, it’s about local air quality.
So if we can run a vehicle into that zone, zero emission, even better. So this is one of our PHEVs. And we’ve got 72 in the fleet at the moment. The idea of the vehicle is it obviously runs on petrol as well as electric. But once it gets into Ultra Low Emission Zone
It can run purely on electric, which fulfills all the all the emission criteria. And it’s provable. We’ve got the data on this on the system and can tell that that’s what that vehicle was actually doing at the time. The main reasons for a PHEV was wanting to electrify
But wanting not to have range anxiety. So Transit Custom – that’s it, perfect. Once we got them all delivered in, did a poll amongst all the drivers asking if there were any downsides to any vehicles. And the only downside that came out was stuff that we’d fitted to the vehicle.
Nothing to do with the vehicle at all. Everybody’s happy with the vehicle. So yeah, win-win. What we needed was to have the charging option at the depot and we needed to fit multiple points. This depot, we’ve got three double chargers down this side and a further two on the other side.
So ten altogether on the site, you can have a standard system where you plug everything in and it simply spreads the load. But there are situations where you need to maybe charge a vehicle faster or you want to take advantage of charging at night where the tariff is lower.
The systems are pretty much integrated between Ford Pro™ Telematics, which we use on all of the vehicles and the Ford Pro™ Charging. So that tells us when that vehicle is charging, when it’s been charged, where it’s been charged. So that’s really useful for us. Ford and the contractors, they sent an engineer
And produced a plan for us and a couple of options. The brief from us was to get as many as they possibly could in, which for us it is all about future planning, really. We had to move just about everything out of the yard.
I think that was one of the first things we realised is that quite a lot of storage would have to be given up to actually provide charging for the vehicles, but I think most of them find that it’s just another way of doing the work. So it’s just as efficient.
I think with the introduction of clean air zones in cities and we need to go greener, it would be more efficient. I think the shorter journey times for the team, I think the change from manual to automatic has been great. It creates a better driving experience for them. Data is important.
Without that data, you won’t be able to choose which vehicles you’re going to switch for electric. Next steps for us, that is to identify larger vehicles that we can electrify. Hopefully there’ll be some that maybe even hybrid that we can use. We’ve got the telematics and we’ve got the Ford Pro™ Charging,
And that will help us identify which vehicles we can electrify further.
Leading Out of Home media and infrastructure company, Clear Channel UK, is on a mission to create the future of media – providing advertising solutions while making a positive impact on society and the environment.
Now, Clear Channel has found a steadfast partner in Ford Pro and its comprehensive platform of solutions. A fleet of 72 Transit Custom Plug-In Hybrid vans enables them to operate all over the country in low-emission zones and data from Ford Pro Telematics allows fleet managers to demonstrate compliance with regulations. Consultancy from the Ford Pro Charging team has enabled them to develop a bespoke, flexible and future-proofed depot charging network and these integrated systems are playing a crucial role in Clear Channel’s journey to decarbonise its fleet.
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