Wheels

Developing a strategy: Wheels partners with Rappel to develop a strategy to estimate and address its Scope 3 downstream fleet

Introduction:

Wheels is one of the largest fleet management and mobility solutions providers in North America. They deliver a full range of products and services that keep businesses and their mobile workforce moving efficiently and safely. Wheels supports end-to-end solutions for more than 1,000 clients, representing 900,000+ vehicles.

Wheels has offered environmentally sustainable driving solutions including low-emission and electric vehicles for years and has adopted environmentally sound practices within its building operations, but sought to gain a better understanding of its full emissions inventory to assess reduction opportunities.

The Challenge:

Wheels, at its core, strives to be efficient in all matters, including energy use; however, due to the nature of their business, nearly 100% of the Company's emissions are considered Scope 3 (outside of Wheels’ operational control). Wheels needed to understand their GHG footprint, what reductions would be required to align with different decarbonization frameworks, and how that reduction would translate to required action from them, their customers, and their supply chain.

Addressing this need posed two key challenges for Wheels. First, the emissions came from a large and diverse fleet of vehicles. Many of these vehicles are difficult to decarbonize due to the customers’ business activities and needed vehicle type where the solutions or technologies are still reaching commercial scale. Second, Wheels' customers, not Wheels, control what vehicles make up the fleet and how they are used, creating an additional barrier to implementation.

The Outcome:

Rappel used CO₂-AIM to determine what it would take to decarbonize Wheels' customers' fleets to various levels of ambition, identifying how many vehicles would require transition and what solutions could be implemented to be aligned with global frameworks. Rappel then worked with Wheels' leadership to develop a strategy that engaged customers in tracking their Wheels-supported, customer-specific decarbonization progress.

To accomplish this, Rappel first led Wheels through a process to comprehensively measure its Scope 3 emissions. Rappel modeled the usage and emissions for each vehicle in Wheels' customers' fleets based on company-provided fuel usage, operations, and state, then segmented those emissions into core product offerings of leased or sold vehicles. In doing so, Rappel highlighted that the majority of emissions come from leased vehicles, and most sold vehicles were first leased -- thus, the decarbonization analysis focused on leased vehicle metrics.  

Following this emissions analysis, Rappel modeled the cost and emissions impact of transitioning each individual vehicle to a pre-determined set of allowable vehicle transitions, including gas-hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electric vehicle alternatives.

Rappel used CO₂-AIM to model multiple frameworks of decarbonization, including a decarbonization pathway in line with SBTi's (Science Based Targets initiative) onroad transportation sectoral decarbonization approach (SDA). Rappel's model identified the most actionable and cost-effective decarbonization pathway for each framework, highlighting the required levels of alternative vehicle adoption and pinpointing customer segments / vehicle types with the strongest economic cases for decarbonization.

Following the decarbonization roadmap analysis, Wheels is now positioned to track its emissions performance against the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) framework and gain deeper insight into the organizational impact of actions across Scope 1, 2, and 3. While customer decision-making lies out of Wheels’ direct operational control, Wheels can still play a critical role in enabling decarbonization by equipping customers with the knowledge and metrics necessary to transition their fleets. With this foundation, the company is prepared to take strategic, efficient action to monitor progress and drive meaningful emissions reductions across its operations and value chain.

Wheels and Rappel continue their partnership through annual emissions calculations and tracking, decarbonization support, and evolving requests and requirements.

Power in Numbers