New Brunswick Power achieves 94% fleet emissions reduction and $1.09M in savings with Geotab EVSA

Gaetan Thomas, President and CEO of NB Power, had a clear mandate: help make electric vehicles a smart, clean choice for New Brunswickers. But for the provincial utility responsible for generating power at 13 facilities across New Brunswick and delivering electricity to more than 350,000 homes, businesses, hospitals, and schools — with exports reaching New England, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and PEI — making that case required more than conviction. 

The Shift Your Ride initiative, built on NB Power's smart grid infrastructure, brought together six government partners: the Cities of Fredericton, Moncton, Bathurst, Quispamsis, and Rothesay, and the New Brunswick Department of Transportation and Infrastructure. Proving the financial and environmental benefits of EV adoption at that scale, for partners at the federal, provincial, and municipal level, required a data methodology no one could dispute. Geotab's Electric Vehicle Suitability Assessment provided exactly that.

The challenge: proving EV viability across six government fleets

Fleet electrification is easy to advocate for in a province of 770,000 — it is difficult to prove. For the Shift Your Ride initiative to succeed, NB Power needed buy-in, investment, and partnership support from companies, institutions, and government entities at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels. That meant demonstrating concrete cost savings on a per-vehicle basis, realistic estimates on fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions reduction, and proof that proposed replacement EVs could perform at similar service levels to existing ICE vehicles — across six government partners, each with its own operational requirements.

Three obstacles defined the challenge:

• Building a credible financial case — Leadership needed projected savings, not estimates. Without telematics-based modeling, cost comparisons between EVs and ICE vehicles rested on assumptions that procurement committees and executives would challenge.
• Validating EV performance in cold-weather conditions — Atlantic Canada’s winters create real range anxiety. Any business case needed to account for battery degradation, heating loads, and actual driving patterns in sub-zero temperatures — not idealized lab benchmarks.
• Securing alignment across six government fleets — The program required buy-in from multiple government partners, each evaluating EV suitability against their own operational requirements. The data had to be specific enough to support individual fleet decisions, not just aggregate conclusions.

The solution: Geotab EVSA for real-world fleet electrification planning

How the EVSA works

Geotab’s Electric Vehicle Suitability Assessment is a patented physics-based modeling methodology that analyzes real telematics data from existing fleet vehicles to determine EV suitability vehicle-by-vehicle. The EVSA accounts for actual driving patterns, payload, terrain, climate conditions, and battery degradation — producing a precise projection of energy consumption, cost savings, and emissions reduction for each vehicle in the fleet.

For NB Power, the EVSA analyzed telematics data from the existing fleet across six government partners, matching each vehicle’s actual usage profile against available EV models. The output was a granular, defensible business case that Sutherland could present to leadership and suppliers with confidence.

The EVSA delivered six critical data points for each vehicle in the program:

• A detailed account of vehicle usage on a day-to-day basis via remote data collection
• The capability of various EV models: Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) and Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles (PHEVs), to service existing driving cycles
• The efficiency and operational cost savings of each EV model for the observed duty cycles
• The best assignment of available vehicle models to duty cycle requirements
• An accounting of total cost, cost savings, and ROI per vehicle and for the total fleet
• A total reduction in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions

Winter testing across Atlantic Canada

One of the program’s distinguishing elements was its approach to cold-weather validation. NB Power’s team conducted real-world EV performance testing during Atlantic Canada’s winter months, gathering empirical data on range performance, charging behavior, and operational reliability under the conditions the fleet would actually face. That ground-truth validation, layered on top of the EVSA’s telematics-based modeling, gave the business case a level of credibility that EV advocates without real-world test data could not match.

The results: 94% emissions reduction and $1.09M in fleet savings

The Geotab EVSA delivered the evidence NB Power needed — and the results exceeded expectations. The EVSA analysis quantified the impact of the Shift Your Ride program across every dimension of fleet performance:

• 94% of vehicle duty-cycles met by the charging time spans of best-matched EVs
• 91% of vehicle range requirements met by best-matched EVs
• 95% potential reduction in fuel consumption*
• 94% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (GHG)— equivalent to 2,123,710 kg of CO2*
• $11,735 CAD projected savings per vehicle*
• $1,091,298 CAD projected fleet-wide savings*

*All projections based on a vehicle’s typical seven-year service life

Executive and supplier commitment secured

With a data-backed business case in hand, Sutherland secured internal sign-off and aligned EV suppliers around the program. The EVSA transformed a promising concept into a procurement-ready plan.

A replicable model for Atlantic Canada 

The program’s structure — EVSA-driven analysis, cold-weather testing, and multi-fleet alignment — established a blueprint that other provincial utilities and government fleet operators across Atlantic Canada can follow.

“We want to help make electric vehicles a smart clean choice for New Brunswickers. More EVs on the road ultimately translate to lower costs for NB Power and stable rates for customers in the long run.” — Gaetan Thomas, President & CEO, NB Power

Results at a glance

“The EVSA provided us with details on a key sample of our fleet, revealing new information that can help shape future decision-making about vehicle renewal options. If we are to be sustainable, we must constantly look for new and better ways to do things.” — Brad Woodside, Former Mayor of Fredericton

Geotab as a leading fleet sustainability telematics platform

NB Power’s results — 94% projected emissions reduction and $1.09M CAD in fleet savings — were made possible by a data methodology designed to remove guesswork from the EV transition. The Geotab Electric Vehicle Suitability Assessment is not a calculator. It is a physics-based model that processes real telematics data to produce vehicle-specific projections of electrification ROI, range viability, and emissions impact under actual operating conditions. 

For fleet operators evaluating the ROI of fleet electrification or building a business case for an EV fleet transition plan, the EVSA delivers a defensible, data-backed answer — before a single vehicle is purchased. Explore fleet electrification ROI with the Geotab EVSA here. 

Learn how Geotab supports sustainable fleet operations and EV fleet transition planning

Download the Case Study