Rappel was recently featured in Climate Change Business Journal's Transportation & Smart Cities issue (Vol. XIX, No. 4-5-6, Q2 2026).
Climate Change Business Journal® (CCBJ), launched in 2007 as a subscription-based business research publication under Environmental Business International Inc., serves as the centerpiece of business intelligence providing detailed market research on nine segments of the Climate Change Industry, including renewable energy, carbon capture & storage, climate change adaptation, energy efficiency and green buildings.
Allison Eames, Rappel's Director of Carbon Intelligence and Analytics, was interviewed for her perspective on fleet decarbonization trends and Rappel's asset-level approach to evaluating ROI-positive decarbonization opportunities. The full company profile and interview is reprinted below.
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Rappel delivers ROI-positive energy and carbon management for companies with lean sustainability teams and resources. Rappel's core IP is CO2-AIM, a proprietary asset-level decarbonization model that evaluates the carbon and financial impact of 1,500+ decarbonization levers spanning energy efficiency, fleet transition, renewables, and fuel switching to surface the high-ROI reduction opportunities based on how the company actually operates.
To date, Rappel has modeled over 2,500 facilities and 650,000 vehicles, delivering an average 15% reduction in our customers' energy costs. Rappel partners with companies across 80+ countries and diverse industries such as industrial manufacturing, business services, food and beverage, healthcare, tech, and beyond.
Allison Eames, Director of Carbon Intelligence and Analytics. Ms. Eames leads the product, engineering, and analytical direction of CO2-AIM. Using her background in public and private fleet transition and energy modeling, she focuses on building scalable tools that connect emissions data to operational and financial decision making.
Eames: Corporate transportation decarbonization has become significantly more practical and more nuanced over the last five years. Five years ago, many companies were under strong pressure to electrify, but the market did not yet offer enough viable options for many fleet types. The dominant narrative was often "electric or nothing." That framing created urgency, but it also oversimplified the operational realities that fleets face. Many companies were being asked to make commitments before they had sufficient vehicle availability, charging infrastructure, data visibility, or financial clarity.
Today, the conversation has matured. There are more electric vehicle options available, and electrification remains one of the most important decarbonization pathways. However, companies are increasingly approaching transportation decarbonization through a broader business and ROI lens. Operational realities have set in. Fleet owners now better understand that vehicle duty cycle, geography, infrastructure access, maintenance requirements, driver behavior, payload, route predictability, and replacement timing all influence whether a decarbonization measure is practical.
As a result, companies are increasingly reaching for a full toolbox of options. That toolbox includes battery electric vehicles, hybrids, plug-in hybrids, idle reduction, routing optimization, right-sizing, equipment electrification, renewable fuels where appropriate, and operational changes. The shift is not away from electrification, but toward a more sophisticated understanding of where electrification works best, where it does not yet work, and how to sequence action over time.
The strongest transportation decarbonization strategies today are not single technology strategies. They are portfolio strategies that account for emissions, cost, operational feasibility, asset replacement cycles, infrastructure constraints, and risk.
Eames: All of these factors matter, but the relative importance varies significantly by company, sector, and fleet type.
For fleets, regulatory pressure is one of the most effective motivators for action. We have seen companies accelerate planning in response to looming or proposed requirements, particularly where regulations could affect vehicle purchases, fleet composition, public disclosure, or customer eligibility. California's Advanced Clean Fleets regulation, California SB 253 and SB 261, and requirements tied to clean off-road equipment or incentive programs have all helped move transportation decarbonization from a theoretical sustainability topic to an operational planning issue.
At the same time, regulatory uncertainty can quickly slow action. When regulations are delayed, challenged, narrowed, or otherwise weakened, some companies deprioritize decarbonization planning, particularly if the business case is not yet clear. This shows that regulation can be a strong catalyst, but it is often most durable when paired with customer pressure, investor expectations, and a credible financial case.
Customer expectations are also an increasingly important motivator, especially for companies with distributed fleets that serve large corporate customers. In some sectors, decarbonization pressure shows up through specific contracts, bid requirements, preferred supplier programs, or regional customer expectations rather than through one consolidated corporate emissions target. This is one reason we are seeing more piecemeal action. Companies may begin with a specific region, customer segment, or vehicle class rather than a full fleetwide transition.
Investor expectations also remain important, particularly where transportation emissions are material to a company's climate risk profile or transition plan. Investors increasingly want companies to demonstrate that they understand the operational and financial implications of decarbonization, not simply that they have set a target. Economics are often less of an initial motivator and more of a gating requirement. In response to regulations, customer pressure, or investor expectations, companies still usually want to see a clear case for return on investment, total cost of ownership, or avoided risk before they commit to a major initiative. For many fleets, decarbonization has to be justified not only as an emissions reduction strategy, but as a business decision.
Eames: Transportation emissions data has improved substantially, but unevenly. More fleets are using telematics, fuel management systems, maintenance systems, route planning tools, and asset management platforms. These systems provide a much richer view of fleet operations than traditional annual fuel spend or odometer-based estimates. Telematics data can reveal mileage, routing, idle time, utilization, dwell time, vehicle location, speed, and operating patterns. This information is extremely valuable for emissions measurement and for evaluating decarbonization options.
At Rappel, we use operational information to attribute emissions at the vehicle or asset level and to evaluate decarbonization options in a way that reflects actual usage. Without asset-level information, companies are often limited to high level total cost of ownership assessments. Those assessments can be useful, but they may not reflect the realities of individual vehicles or equipment. Two vehicles with the same make, model, and fuel type may have very different emissions profiles and very different decarbonization opportunities depending on how and where they are used.
However, better technology has not eliminated basic data challenges. Many fleets still struggle to centralize and maintain core fleet data. Vehicle inventories may be incomplete. Fuel data may not be linked cleanly to specific assets. Vehicle classes may be inconsistently defined. Location data may be missing or outdated. Replacement schedules may not be digitized. These issues remain significant barriers to emissions measurement and decarbonization planning.
The encouraging part is that these data gaps are not only climate issues. They are also business intelligence issues. Improving fleet data quality can support emissions accounting, but it can also improve maintenance planning, asset utilization, procurement decisions, fuel management, safety analysis, and operational efficiency. In that sense, transportation emissions data is becoming part of a broader push toward better fleet intelligence.
Eames: Industries with last-mile operations are generally moving fastest, particularly where vehicles have predictable routes, return-to-base operations, moderate daily mileage, and strong customer visibility. These characteristics make electrification more practical from both an infrastructure and return on investment perspective. Last-mile delivery, local distribution, municipal fleets, and certain service fleets can often identify strong early candidates for battery electric vehicles.
Equipment heavy sectors also have meaningful opportunities, especially where handheld or small off-road equipment can be electrified. Landscaping, grounds maintenance, and similar operations can often reduce emissions, noise, and localized air pollution by shifting to battery powered equipment. These use cases can be especially compelling because they may provide operational and worker health benefits in addition to emissions reductions.
The greatest barriers remain in fleet segments where operational requirements are more demanding or less predictable. Service fleets, work trucks, utility vehicles, vocational vehicles, and specialty equipment often have fewer commercially available alternatives that meet all operational needs. These assets may require high payload capacity, long duty cycles, power take-off functionality, field charging, rapid response capability, or operation in remote areas. In many cases, the pressure to decarbonize these fleets is increasing faster than the availability of practical solutions.
This creates a difficult planning challenge. Companies in these sectors may face customer, investor, or regulatory pressure, but the commercially available options may still be limited. For these fleets, the most practical approach is often to identify the subset of assets that can transition now, evaluate bridge technologies where appropriate, improve efficiency, and build a longer-term plan around vehicle availability, infrastructure readiness, and replacement cycles.
Eames: One of the most important shifts is that companies are beginning to recognize that average assumptions are not enough. A fleetwide average cost assessment can hide the fact that some assets are excellent candidates for electrification while others are not. The economics can vary dramatically by vehicle, location, route, mileage, fuel price, electric rate, incentive availability, and infrastructure cost.
This is why asset-level analysis matters. Companies need to understand which vehicles or equipment should transition first, which should wait until a later replacement cycle, and which may require a different solution entirely. The goal is not simply to calculate whether a technology is cost-effective on average. The goal is to identify the specific deployment opportunities where the business case, emissions impact, and operational feasibility align.
Eames: Fuel price volatility has always been part of operating a fleet, but recent volatility has reinforced the importance of fuel risk in long term planning.
Spikes in fossil fuel prices are a reminder that diesel and gasoline expose fleets to price risk, supply risk, and geopolitical risk. Electricity prices are also rising in many markets, but they have historically been more predictable and less volatile than fossil fuel prices. For fleets that can electrify, this predictability can improve long term planning and reduce exposure to fuel market volatility.
Some fleet owners are beginning to recognize fuel price risk as a strategic issue, not just an operating expense. However, many still treat fuel costs as a normal cost of doing business. In some cases, fuel costs are passed through to customers, which can reduce the perceived urgency to change. That accounting treatment can obscure the underlying risk. Even if fuel costs are passed through, price volatility can still affect customer relationships, competitiveness, contract structure, and margin stability.
Companies should evaluate fuel costs not only based on current prices, but also based on long-term exposure. A decarbonization investment may look different when viewed through the lens of price stability, avoided volatility, and resilience.
Eames: One underappreciated financial risk is the connection between fleet decarbonization, driver experience, safety, and retention.
Companies often evaluate transportation decarbonization primarily through vehicle cost, fuel cost, and emissions impact. Those are important, but they do not capture the full value of some technologies. Drivers often report a better experience with electric and hybrid vehicles because of reduced noise, smoother operation, and lower vibration. Battery powered equipment can also reduce noise exposure and localized air pollution for workers. In some settings, reducing exhaust exposure and noise can improve working conditions in ways that matter for retention, safety, and productivity.
These benefits are difficult to quantify, but they can be financially meaningful. Driver turnover, recruiting, training, downtime, and workplace safety all have real costs. Companies that ignore these factors may undervalue certain decarbonization opportunities. Another underestimated risk is transition readiness. Companies may assume they can act later, but infrastructure development, procurement cycles, utility coordination, incentive applications, and vehicle availability can all take time. A company that waits until a regulation, customer requirement, or internal target becomes urgent may find that it cannot move quickly enough.
Eames: This is one of the most important questions in transportation decarbonization, and many organizations are not yet addressing it with enough precision.
The right answer varies by asset, location, duty cycle, and business objective. A battery electric vehicle may be the best solution for one route and the wrong solution for another vehicle in the same fleet. A hybrid may be a practical near-term option for certain use cases. Operational efficiency may provide immediate savings and emissions reductions while infrastructure planning is underway. Renewable fuels may be relevant in some cases, particularly where drop-in solutions are needed, but they should be evaluated carefully based on availability, cost, emissions accounting treatment, and long-term supply considerations.
At Rappel, we approach this through asset-level optimization. We evaluate replacement cycles, technology options, emissions impact, capital cost, operating cost, infrastructure requirements, and customer or regulatory constraints over time. The strategy can then be optimized against the company's goals, whether the priority is return on investment, emissions reductions, capital efficiency, compliance, or a balanced mix of objectives.
Once the best opportunities are identified, implementation can be consolidated into a practical rollout plan. That might mean focusing on a specific region, vehicle class, customer contract, facility, or technology. The key is to move from a broad list of possible solutions to a sequenced strategy that the business can actually execute.
Eames: Yes. Companies are increasingly pursuing portfolio approaches rather than single technology solutions.
The portfolio approach is important because fleet decarbonization is rarely uniform. A single technology will not solve every use case. A practical transition plan should identify what can be done now, what should be piloted, what should be deferred, and what requires market or infrastructure development before it becomes feasible.
Eames: Companies should evaluate decarbonization opportunities through a broader lens that includes cost, risk, resilience, operational performance, employee experience, and customer value.
Resilience is particularly important. Fleet operations depend on fuel availability, infrastructure reliability, vehicle uptime, and the ability to serve customers under changing conditions. Companies should evaluate how decarbonization affects these risks. For example, electrification can reduce exposure to fossil fuel volatility, but it also introduces new planning requirements around charging infrastructure, utility capacity, backup power, and operational scheduling. These are not reasons to avoid electrification. They are reasons to plan carefully.
Climate transition risk also applies more broadly to fleet decarbonization. Companies may face changing customer requirements, procurement standards, disclosure expectations, regional regulations, or incentive structures. A strong decarbonization strategy should help companies reduce emissions while also improving their ability to adapt to these external pressures.
Eames: I would be hesitant to generalize too broadly across the full transportation sustainability services market. Demand varies significantly by sector, fleet type, region, regulatory exposure, and where a company is in its decarbonization journey.
That said, we are seeing continued interest in services that help companies move from broad goals to practical decisions. Many companies already have emissions inventories, climate targets, or customer-driven sustainability commitments. The harder question is what to do next, in what order, and under what financial and operational constraints.
Automation and AI will also play a growing role. Fleet and emissions data is often fragmented across telematics systems, fuel records, maintenance platforms, procurement files, and finance systems. Automation can help reduce the manual burden of cleaning, organizing, and updating that data.
AI can help teams identify patterns, flag data quality issues, compare scenarios, and make complex analyses easier to interpret. However, these tools will be most valuable when paired with strong domain expertise. Transportation decarbonization still requires judgment about operations, technology readiness, infrastructure, emissions accounting, and financial feasibility.
Eames: Clients value practical, business oriented decarbonization support.
Fleets are juggling many priorities at once: technology changes, vehicle availability, regulations, customer requirements, incentive opportunities, infrastructure constraints, operational needs, capital limits, and internal emissions goals. They need partners who understand that carbon reduction is only one part of a larger business decision.
Although Rappel's services are carbon focused, clients value that we approach decarbonization through the full business context. Companies do not just need an emissions calculation. They need to know which actions are feasible, which are financially attractive, which should be prioritized, and what risks they need to manage along the way.
Originally featured in Climate Change Business Journal, Vol. XIX No. 4-5-6, Q2 2026.