Meralco vs climate change: Greening the distribution utility through 'Clean Fleet' management

MANILA, Philippines - As the effects of climate change have become more evident and destructive as witnessed by recent calamities brought about by massive typhoons, various groups and companies have initiated ‘green’ projects that can help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

With this, major utility company Me-ralco is now driving towards a ‘greener’ path by enforcing a ‘Clean Fleet’ manage-ment system. This is now being imple-mented starting with Meralco’s South Distribution Services (SDS) in partnership with CAI-Asia (Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities), the Lopez Group Business Excellence and Isuzu, one of the company’s suppliers.

With the ‘Clean Fleet’ management system, Meralco aims to attain a sustainable greenhouse gas reduction in its distribution business specifically in its fleet equipment.

“Meralco is very aware of its carbon footprint. With this corporate initiative, we aim to contribute to a greener environment by partnering with like-minded organizations and by reducing the emissions of our more than 1,000 units of fleet equipment,” said Ferdinand Geluz, project manager and SDS head. “We want to improve our processes to optimize fuel and equipment use and reinforce awareness and influence employee behavior through participation, training and monitoring.”

The Meralco SDS, which covers Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, and Quezon provinces (which is over half of Meralco’s franchise area) is the pilot site since SDS was ISO 14001 certified for its Environmental Management System last March 2009.

“This climate change initiative makes Meralco one of the first Philippine companies to engage in GHG accounting and voluntary reduction using the United Nations Environment Programme-developed Clean Fleet Management Toolkit. The project will show that greening the utility operations also means economic opportunities for the utility through efficiency initiatives related to GHG reduction for fuel and equipment use,” said Geluz. “Sharing the greening journey will support the move that GHG avoidance and reduction can be done with minimum cost and disruption to operations.”

Project partners are now training Meralco employees on proper fleet use, testing and maintenance, and green-friendly habits like ‘eco-driving’ to save fuel. The results on the pilot testing will guide project replication in Meralco’s North and Central Distribution Services soon. 

With the initial success, Geluz and Leandro del Rosario, Fleet Team Leader of SDS Logistics were invited by the CAI-Asia, the Partnership for Clean Air (PCA), and the Philippine Business for the Environment (PBE) last month to speak on Meralco SDS’s experiences on piloting the Cleaner Fleet Management Toolkit of UNEP.