Ireland’s national postage company, An Post, is continuing its switchover to an electric fleet and is the latest addition to the global EV100, an initiative of international businesses accelerating the move to electric vehicles. This group includes entities like pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, Bank of America, GlaxoSmithKline and Tesco.
An Post states that, of its current fleet of over 3,000 vehicles, electric vehicles make up 30 per cent. Attention is now turning to sourcing alternative fuel vehicles for its HGV fleet that accounts for half of all of its fleet-related carbon emissions.
Reducing emissions in cities
It also earned the accolade of being the first postal service to achieve a zero-carbon emission delivery status in a capital city. The deployment of a fully electric 7.5-tonne truck further supported this cause. An Post now states that deliveries in the cities of Cork, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick and Waterford are done without local emissions, and there are plans to expand this to more urban areas in 2021.
Nicola Woods, Chief Transformation Officer for An Post, said:
“Our participation will help pioneer and grow both our electric fleet and electric vehicle charging sites. Through our initiatives, we enable our commercial and personal customers to take positive, measurable action on time-critical issue of carbon reduction. We value the power of peer learning and these actionable global insights and the EV100 experts will help us to formulate strategy, particularly around heavy goods vehicles. Our membership of EV100 supports An Post’s purpose in acting for the common good, now and for generations to come.”
The Head of EV100, Sandra Roling, added:
“We are very glad to have An Post joining EV100. As well as a commitment to being fully electric by 2030, An Post has publicly committed that all of their city fleets will have zero emission vehicles by 2021. This leadership is exactly what we want to see from EV100 members, and a great demonstration of the potential of going electric in the postal sector.”