GETTING MOVING ON CLIMATE NEUTRALITY

When your company’s annual emissions are about the same as Croatia’s, moving towards climate neutrality may seem like a tall order.

But Deutsche Post DHL, the world’s leading mail and logistics services group, is among a number of key players in the transport sector to have joined the UNEP Climate Neutral Network.

Transport accounts for about a fifth of global carbon dioxide emissions, and that proportion is projected to rise steadily as car sales soar in developing countries, and aviation continues its relentless expansion. The International Energy Agency forecasts that transport emissions will rise 80 per cent between now and 2030.

Yet transport has barely been touched by the international mechanisms designed to tackle climate change. Of more than eighteen hundred projects earning carbon credits under the UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), just two are transport-related. Two crucial parts of the sector, international aviation and shipping, are entirely excluded from the targets of the Kyoto Protocol because no single country is deemed responsible for their emissions.

So the involvement of major transport companies in volun- tary initiatives to calculate, minimize and offset their emis- sions is crucially important.

Deutsche Post DHL’s global footprint in 2008 is estimated at 32 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, the equivalent of a small country. Through its extensive network and infrastructure, it touches approximately 5 per cent of total global trade volume, employing around 500,000 people, using 120,000 vehicles and 319 aeroplanes.

So what is the company doing about it?

Deutsche Post DHL’s “GoGreen” programme, launched in 2008, has the central goal to improve the company’s CO2

Another delivery company, on a much more modest scale but still a significant player in its own area, is making carbon neutrality a high-profile selling point for its services.

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efficiency (emissions per shipment, tonne, kilometre or square metre) by 30 per cent by 2020.

This is especially challenging as it includes so-called Scope 3 emissions, those outside the company’s direct control. In Deutsche Post DHL’s case this actually accounts for the great bulk of its emissions—more than 25 million tonnes, largely from subcontracted transport companies.

To achieve that target, a wide-ranging programme is being introduced across the company’s operations, spanning the use of more efficient trailers and aircraft, new logistics technologies to cut down on truck-miles, and specialist services and products to help customers and contractors to reduce their own CO2

footprint.

Among the innovative initiatives has been to use the first modern ocean-going cargo vessel to be powered partly by wind—the MS Beluga SkySails.

Steffen Frankenberg, Vice President of the GoGreen programme at Deutsche Post DHL says, "Our customers are asking more and more for green solutions. Currently we are running efficiency analysis projects for the supply chains of some of our top customers.

“We believe in the opportunities of a low-carbon economy– for us and for our customers.”

offsets them with investments in international CDM climate protection projects.

In addition to joint consulting and efficiency projects, Deutsche Post DHL already offers the carbon-neutral shipping service GoGreen to its customers. If they decide to send their letter, parcel or express shipment “green”, the company calculates the transport-related CO2

emissions and