Care of the environment a daily event

The climate is still at the centre of the environmental debate and is closely linked to the issue of future sources of energy. Rail offers considerable benefits since it consumes relatively little energy and draws its energy from renewable sources, which means its carbon dioxide emissions are extremely low. We are noticing that more customers are actively looking for solutions that include electrically powered trains since this is the fastest way to decrease a transport's carbon footprint. More than 90 percent of our transports use electrically-powered trains run by water power and a little bit of wind power. Electrically powered trains represent a very small portion of our environmental impact so our environmental activities instead focus primarily on transports that use diesel. Our overall targets are to decrease our diesel consumption within both our Road and Rail operations and decrease our energy consumption at our logistics facilities. The target has been met within Rail, but is still somewhat short within Road and at our logistics facilities.

During 2009, the renovation of our largest diesel locomotives continued according to plan. As part of the first phase, 62 of our more than 100 locomotives were to undergo modernisation and, after an investigation into the environmental benefits, it was decided to invest in a new engine rather than renovating the exiting engines. This will mean there will be less noise, lower emissions of particles and nitric oxides and around a 20 percent decrease in carbon dioxide emissions. In conjunction with the ITS World Congress in Stockholm, the Minister of Communications, Åsa Torstensson, handed out Climate Certificates to 24 of our customers. The certificates recognise that the transports of these customers with Green Cargo emit less than 10 grams of carbon dioxide per net tonne-km. In practice, this requires utilising a large number of electrically powered trains to stay under the limit. At the same time, the Climate Comet of the Year was awarded to COOP for its investment in COOP-trains between Helsingborg and Stockholm. The COOP rail solution has meant that there are 350 fewer trucks on the E4 motorway every week and is a part of a conscious decision from COOP to be an environmental leader in its sector.

Green Cargo uses what may be the most advanced web-based environmental calculator available today, EcoTransit. It is available via our website and is continuously developed as part of a European co-operation. It calculates the environmental impact of customer transports between two locations and the results are shown immediately in tables or diagrams. EcoTransit includes road and rail networks, ports and airports, and can show a map of the freight path via Google Earth. The program currently encompasses Europe, and the focus in 2009 was on developing a global version that will be launched in the beginning of 2010 under the name Ecotransit World.

During 2010, we will continue to focus on decreasing our fossil fuel consumption. We will continue to train our truck drivers in Ecodriving and the drivers of our diesel locomotives will participate in a unique training program developed in cooperation with the National Association of Swedish Driving Schools. We intend to move the training course online, making it easily accessible for all employees. We will also work to introduce more biofuel into our diesel vehicles than we have used previously.

Scorecard environment

• Our operations in 2009
• Our stakeholders
• Green Cargo's management
  • Scorecard
  • Safety
  • Employees
  • Society
  • Environment
    • Environmental impact
  • Customers
  • Finance
• Risks and risk management
• Outlook and profit appropriation