Hydrogen-powered garbage trucks for the City of Palo Alto
Team members
Lauryn Franzese
Solmih Kim
Ila Mathur
Vel Senthil
Faculty mentor
Amin Saberi
Sponsor organization
The City of Palo Alto’s mission is to promote and sustain a high quality of life in Palo Alto.
Project description
The City of Palo Alto faces a critical challenge in fleet management due to a lack of comprehensive financial strategy and environmental and policy analysis, hindering informed investment decisions regarding hydrogen-powered garbage trucks. Currently, the city's fleet consists of 30 garbage trucks—28 diesel-powered and 2 battery-electric. Hydrogen fuel cell technology presents a promising yet costly alternative, aligning with sustainability goals while introducing complex financial and regulatory considerations.
Amid evolving environmental regulations and the growing demand for sustainable municipal operations, the City of Palo Alto enlisted the expertise of our team to conduct a rigorous analysis. Our objective was to assess and identify the most cost-effective, environmentally sustainable, and regulatory-compliant fleet composition for the city’s waste management operations.
Techniques and methods used
As Stanford seniors studying MS&E, our team of four decided to apply as many key principles, frameworks, and learnings from our undergraduate curriculum to tackle this problem. The core methodologies guiding our decision stem from the following:
- Decision Quality Framework to assess the fundamental decision, alternatives, uncertainties, and values
- Comparative Cost Analysis to standardize fuel costs and compute total cost of ownership
- Environmental Impact Framework to analyze life cycle of carbon emission and introduce a Sustainable Return on Investment (SROI) model
- Regulatory and Political Analysis to assess Federal policy shifts and California’s Hydrogen/ZEV Policy
- 20-Year Scenario Analysis to aggregate methods 1-4 and weigh investment decisions
Solutions and deliverables
Based on our 20-Year Scenario Analysis, we recommend that the City of Palo Alto adopt a phased approach to hydrogen truck investment, aligning with long-term sustainability goals and evolving regulations while mitigating financial and operational risks. Given the declining cost-effectiveness, increasing regulatory restrictions, and long-term environmental impact of diesel trucks, further investments in this technology should be discontinued. Additionally, the city should leverage policy incentives and emerging technologies to optimize the cost-benefit ratio and facilitate a smooth transition toward a fully zero-emission fleet, and more importantly, a more sustainable future.