CAMBRIDGE, MA - Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government announced today that the 2005 Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership will go to the FedEx-Environmental Defense Future Vehicle Project. The award - presented bi-annually to celebrate an outstanding partnership project that enhances environmental quality through the use of novel and creative approaches - will be presented to the recipients in the spring of 2005. The award presentation will take place at the Kennedy School of Government.

The Future Vehicle Project - a collaboration of Environmental Defense, FedEx Express and the Eaton Corporation - has introduced a hybrid delivery truck that increases fuel efficiency by over 50% and reduces particulate emissions by 96%. With 18 hybrid trucks already on the road, FedEx plans to build on the success of this demonstration and make the hybrid vehicles the standard replacement in its weight class of 30,000 medium-duty trucks. “This unique project demonstrates that hybrid trucks can be a practical, economically viable alternative, and could become the industry standard,” said Henry Lee, director of the Kennedy School’s Environment and Natural Resources program, in announcing the 2005 award winner. The Roy Award is coordinated by the Environment and Natural Resources program of the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Because hybrid trucks reduce air pollution, they promise important improvements in human health, according to Lee. “The trucks also reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global climate change,” he said, “and improved fuel efficiency translates into reductions in oil dependency.”

The hybrid truck partnership was selected from a group of highly qualified nominated projects from around the world that tackled tough environmental problems ranging from deforestation to urban sprawl. In the reviews involving over 30 experts both inside and outside of Harvard, however, the Future Vehicle Project ranked first in each of the three reviews.

Reviewers commented on the project’s “intelligence, elegance and simplicity.” One reviewer summarized the comments of others: “The project creates a template that can be replicated in scale. The leverage is huge in many dimensions. It is creative in its use of the market to achieve environmental goals. It gets beyond rhetoric and adversarial confrontation, and demonstrates effective NGO and private sector partnership. It creates tremendous pressure to perform.”

The Roy Family has been a long-time supporter of the development of public-private partnerships to meet social goals. The family, through its businesses and involvement, is dedicated to promoting innovative approaches to environmental policy and the conservation of natural resources. The Roy Family Award attempts to provide positive incentives for companies and organizations worldwide to push the boundaries of creativity and take risks that result in significant changes that benefit our environment.

The first award, presented in March 2003, recognized efforts to design and implement the Noel Kempff Mercado Climate Action Plan in Bolivia. Noel Kempff Mercado is one of the largest carbon sequestration projects in the world. Carbon sequestration is the absorption of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere associated with global warming. Partners in this project included the American Electric Power Company, Pacific Corp and British Petroleum, Fundacion Amigos de la Naturaleza, the Nature Conservancy, and the government of Bolivia.

The runners-up for the 2005 Roy Family Award included:

• Eden Again Project, Restoration of the Mesopotamian Marshland, Iraq.
• Green Neighborhoods Alliance (GNA), Open Space Residential Design, Massachusetts.
• Mexican National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (Conabio), Biodiversity in Mexico.
• WildAid/J. Walter Thompson, Asian Conservation Awareness Program.
• Woods Hole Research Center/Institudo de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia (IPAM)/MAFLOPS, Family Forests Project, Brazil.

The FedEx-Environmental Defense Future Vehicle Project.
Over the last 4 years, Environmental Defense and FedEx Express have worked together to develop a hybrid diesel-electric delivery truck meeting stringent environmental and economic criteria. The first production models of the new truck, which improve fuel economy by more than 50% while demonstrating the same performance and lifetime cost of ownership as traditional diesels, went into service this spring. If all goes well, FedEx plans to make this a standard replacement vehicle in its weight class of 30,000 medium-duty trucks. This project’s selection was based on its success at pushing cutting-edge technology into the market, careful balancing of environmental and economic concerns to create a win-win solution, and potential for widespread replication.

Original press release: “Harvard Announces 2005 Roy Family Environmental Award; New Hybrid FedEx Trucks Will Reduce Emissions 96%, Increase Fuel Efficiency 50%” (Harvard BCSIA)