Exelon unveils utility fleet electrification plan

Exelon Corp.’s six electric and gas utilities will advance transportation electrification through a pledge to electrify 30 percent of their vehicle fleet by 2025, increasing to 50 percent by 2030, the company announced on Wednesday.

The utilities plan to achieve that goal through incorporating a combination of fully electric vehicles, vehicles with plug-in idle mitigation units, and plug-in hybrids. Exelon’s utilities, which include Atlantic City Electric, BGE, ComEd, Delmarva Power, PECO and Pepco subsidiaries, have a combined fleet of more than 7,200 vehicles at their disposal.

“Exelon is committed to providing a cleaner and brighter future for our customers and communities while achieving excellent operational performance,” Calvin Butler, CEO of Exelon Utilities, said. “The transportation sector represents about a third of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Transportation electrification holds the promise of helping the cities and states in which we operate meet their environmental goals, reduce their carbon footprint, bring cleaner air to all communities we serve and create economic opportunity through job creation and reduced energy costs.”

Electrifying even 30 percent of that fleet will, according to Exelon, potentially remove as much as 15 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. It would also save more than 1 million gallons of fuel between 2020 and 2025. Electrifying 50 percent of the fleet could reduce emissions by 12,000-15,000 metric tons and avoid more than 65,000 cumulative metric tons between 2020 and 2030.

To achieve this, Exelon’s utilities will replace end-of-life combustion vehicles with plug-in hybrid and fully electric vehicles where able, and swap all light-duty vehicles reaching the end of their life cycle by 2025 with electric vehicles. All light-duty vehicles in general should be electrified by 2030. These utilities will also turn to mitigation units to partially electrify medium and heavy-duty vehicles where fully electric commercial options are limited or unavailable.

Exelon’s utilities serve approximately 10 million customers across Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia.

“We are proud to lead by example as one of the first utility companies to take major steps to electrify our own fleet of vehicles,” Butler said.