A group of freight companies, led by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), are partnering up to tackle road freight carbon emissions under the Low Carbon Technology Partnerships initative. The partnership, which includes Scania, UPS and Nestle, hopes to help meet the ‘science based’ goal of a 48 per cent decrease in emissions by 2050.
Route Monkey, a company in the partnership, has said that freight volumes have been ‘growing even more rapidly than those from passenger transport,’ and that this is likely to continue. The fleet optimisation specialist said that although every industry is working towards reducing emissions, approaches could be ‘more effective through collaborative solutions.’
“Route Monkey’s optimisation already today cuts carbon emissions and overheads by up to 20 per cent for more than 400 fleet customers,” said Colin Ferguson, CEO of Route Monkey. “By combining selected fleets through this WBCSD initiative, we will from next year enable additional efficiency improvements of 15 per cent with diesel, and up to 60 per cent with alternative fuels.”
Executive vice president and chief commercial officer at UPS, Alan Gershenhorn, said:
“With a recent International Transport Forum study projecting that freight volumes could quadruple by 2050, the Low Carbon Freight initiative is an important catalyst to spearhead solutions to help manage and mitigate transport sector emissions. UPS is glad to collaborate, innovate and share our learnings.”
The WBCSD will be validating the emissions reduction potential for a number of design demonstration projects and solutions in 2016, to test ‘real-world value to companies in 2017-18.
