In what should be good news for the maritime shipping industry, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD) in December awarded $12.6 million in grants to marine highway projects under the America’s Marine Highway Program (AMHP).

This is in addition to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that provides $25 million to support marine highway projects and to increase the use of U.S. waterways.

The goal of AMHP is to ease highway congestion by getting more truckloads and containers off the highway and onto America’s underused waterways.

Speaking at the Port of Los Angeles in November, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said “We’re excited to take things to the next level because we do think the potential for our waterways to get freight off our roads and reduce emissions is underutilized.”
According to Acting Maritime Administrator Lucinda Lessley, “America’s Marine Highway Program is an innovative program that encourages the use of America’s navigable waterways for the movement of freight and people as an alternative to land-based transportation.”

Too often, Americans don’t know enough about the air quality in their communities and the impact it has on their health. A new ProPublica interactive neighborhood map shows, for the first time, the air quality in America’s neighborhoods. It was developed to interpret data from air pollutant monitoring stations into a scale that indicates how polluted the air is and the health effects associated. The higher the Air Quality Index (AQI) value, the greater the level of pollution and the greater health concern. 

Some of the world’s largest companies are joining forces to accelerate efforts to fight the climate crisis. Google, Disney, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Salesforce, Unilever, and Workday have joined forces to increase the scale and impact of business investment in climate solutions. They have partnered to create the Business Alliance for Scaling Climate Solutions (BASCS). This group’s objectives are to gather and disseminate climate solutions, connect with existing initiatives around the community, provide a platform for climate conversations, and then share success stories, best practices, and opportunities. 

Supply chain and material goods shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have created a ripple effect in every industry. These shortages have impacted the trucking industry's operations. New truck builds have been hampered by the supply chain and lack of production material resulting in delays for many new trucks. Unfortunately, these shortages are now affecting fleet demand and impacting the supply chain.  

Air pollution has significant impacts on the environment and the health of human beings. Inhaling pollutants and small particulate matter contribute to cardiovascular disease, respiratory concerns, lung cancer, and onset asthma. The World Health Organization (WHO) has linked over 4.2 million premature deaths from health issues to air pollution. Air pollutants continue to disproportionately affect lower-income communities, leading to poor health for those with no access to health care. Tackling air quality and pollutants needs to be a priority for private companies. 

Demand for data centers increases as modern living becomes more digitized, using incredible amounts of energy. Supplying uninterrupted power to data centers 100% of the time is critical. Data centers must reduce their climate footprint if we are to mitigate climate change. Truthfully, with data centers, critical power is fueled by diesel generators, and reaching 100% renewable energy isn’t possible. 

On September 22nd, Rypos held our quarterly TRU Dealer Webinar.

With the increased utilization of technology in the trucking industry,  air quality regulators have found new and novel approaches to enforcing emissions.  From fleet management monitoring systems to data collection from onboard sensors, regulators have better visibility into emissions violations, leading to more effective enforcement.

Data centers use comes at a cost to the environment. Data centers use an estimated 200 terawatt-hours each year, more than the annual energy consumption of some small countries. They also contribute to overall global and carbon emissions, with a predicted increase of 20% of global electricity demand by 2030. Essentially, data centers must implement environmental innovations to reduce the carbon footprint of data centers.