Yearly tens of 1000’s of containers of manufacturing materials destined for Volvo Automobiles factories are carried the world over’s oceans on container ships. Any further, most of those seafaring journeys are made with renewable gasoline as a substitute of conventional fossil gasoline.
The primary international automobile maker to announce such a swap, Volvo calculates it should obtain an instantaneous discount in fossil CO2 emissions from intercontinental ocean freight by 55,000 tonnes over a yr. Because of the renewable gasoline, CO2 emissions are diminished by at the very least 84% (Nicely-to-Wake, WTW) in comparison with fossil gasoline. The discount is equal to the CO2 emissions of a full truck driving across the equator about 1,200 occasions.
The gasoline used is Fatty Acid Methyl Esters (FAME) (biodiesel) and relies on renewable and sustainable sources, primarily waste cooking oil. No feedstock associated to palm oil or palm oil manufacturing is used.
Volvo will use renewable gasoline for inbound ocean container transports of manufacturing materials destined for manufacturing vegetation based mostly in Europe and the Americas, in addition to all spare components distribution made globally by ocean container transports.
Renewable gasoline just isn’t the top recreation for eradicating CO2 from the world’s ocean freight wants. But this initiative reveals that we are able to act now and implement options that obtain important outcomes in the course of the look ahead to long-term technological alternate options.
We don’t view this initiative as a aggressive benefit. Quite the opposite, we wish to spark different automobile makers into motion as properly, to extend demand for carbon environment friendly ocean transports and to ascertain renewable fuels as a mid-term answer that works. All of us have a accountability to behave.
—Javier Varela, Chief Working Officer and Deputy CEO
Volvo Automobiles has been engaged on this initiative along with its logistics companions Maersk, Kuehne+Nagel and DB Schenker. These logistics service suppliers have from 1 June 2023 switched to renewable gasoline for equal power wanted for all container transports performed for Volvo Automobiles.
When renewable gasoline just isn’t obtainable on a selected cargo, the renewable gasoline allocation is as a substitute utilized by the logistics associate for an additional buyer’s route elsewhere, so the general lower in fossil gasoline use is stored on par with precise use in container vessels. The methodology, known as mass-balancing, is third-party audited often. The renewable gasoline itself is licensed and never produced in competitors with meals crops. It’s due to this fact sustainable in accordance with the EU Renewable Vitality Directive.