Environmental Leader

AT&T is making progress toward its goal of having 15,000 fuel-efficient vehicles after adding alternative energy vehicle No. 1,000.

With a corporate fleet of 77,000 vehicles, that means about 1.2 percent of AT&T’s fleet uses alternative energy.

The company is spending $565 million on the plan to add fuel-efficient vehicles, which started in March of 2009 and will run through 2018, according to a press release.

Vehicle No. 1,000 was a compressed natural gas van deployed in Oakland, Calif.

The overall conversion to more alternative fuel and fuel-efficient vehicles is expected to save AT&T 49 million gallons of gasoline over the 10-year deployment period and reduce carbon emissions 211,000 metric tons.

As part of the plan, AT&T will replace about 8,000 gasoline-powered vehicles with transport that runs on CNG. Additionally, the company says it will replace 7,100 passenger vehicles with alternative-fuel models by 2019.

Other national companies are taking strides to make their fleets more energy efficient.

UPS says it operates one of the largest private fleets of alternative fuel vehicles in its industry with more than 1,900.