How Can I Use The AFLEET Tool To Make Decisions About Alternative Fuels?

Question of the Month: What is the AFLEET Tool, how can I use it to make decisions about alternative fuels, and what are the recent improvements?

Answer: Argonne National Laboratory's Alternative Fuel Life-Cycle Environment and Economic Transportation (AFLEET) Tool allows you to examine both the environmental and economic costs and benefits of alternative fuel and advanced vehicles. By entering data about your light- or heavy-duty vehicle(s), you can estimate petroleum use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, air pollutant emissions, and cost of ownership.

AFLEET uses data from Argonne's Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation (GREET) model and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Motor Vehicle Emissions Simulator (MOVES) model to estimate life cycle (well-to-wheel) GHG and tailpipe air pollutant emissions. Users can either use the model's default values or get even more accurate results by customizing the tool with their real life vehicle or fleet data. By using AFLEET's simple input mechanism, users can answer questions such as:

• What are the emissions savings of replacing a conventionally fueled fleet with alternative fuel vehicles?
• What is the incremental cost, and potential return on investment, of buying a flexible fuel vehicle?
• How many passenger vehicles will be "taken off the road" by using natural gas refuse trucks?

Fleets and others that have been using AFLEET since its original release in 2013 will be pleased to hear that AFLEET has been updated to reflect more recent emissions data. In addition, Argonne added new features to help users formulate a more complete picture of the costs and benefits of alternative fuels.

Updates include:

• Fuel Prices: AFLEET uses public and private station pricing based on the 2015 average Clean Cities Alternative Fuel Price Report data. In addition, fuel pricing is now state-based rather than based on a national average. Users may also input a range of fuel prices to determine effects on simple payback models.
• Infrastructure Costs: The updated version of AFLEET features data on fueling station and electric vehicle supply equipment infrastructure construction, operation, and maintenance costs. Users may also calculate other infrastructure-related costs, such as public station out-of-route mileage and fueling labor costs.
• Latest Vehicle and Emission Data: AFLEET uses the latest GREET 2015 air pollutant emissions data, which includes updated heavy-duty fuel economy and emissions data, data for fuel cell electric vehicles, and updated life cycle data for renewable natural gas. AFLEET has also been updated to use the most recent version of EPA's MOVES data, 2014a.
• Externality Costs: AFLEET output data now includes externality costs of national petroleum use and GHG emissions. Externality costs are the indirect damages associated with fuels that are not explicitly captured by the marketplace (e.g., property damages from increased flood risk as a result of climate change). Externality cost estimates will be useful in putting local vehicle and fleet decisions in a national perspective.

For information about and instructions for using AFLEET, refer to Argonne's AFLEET User Guide.

In addition, check out the Alternative Fuels Data Center's (AFDC) fuel-specific emissions pages for general information on the emissions impacts of the various alternative fuels:

• Biodiesel
• Electricity
• Ethanol
• Hydrogen
• Natural Gas
• Propane

Clean Cities Technical Response Service Team
technicalresponse@icfi.com
800-254-6735