Climate Change
Climate change has become a pressing social issue. We recognise that we have an important role to play in tackling it, firstly through our position as a public transport operator and secondly in reducing our own emissions.
The Role of Public Transport
The surface transport sector is a significant contributor to overall carbon dioxide emissions which continue to rise.Public transport offers a real opportunity to significantly reduce them.
Carbon dioxide emissions per passenger kilometre from trains are only 44% of those from cars. Emissions per passenger kilometre from buses are 30% lower than cars.
In 2005/06 our UK operations contributed to savings in carbon dioxide emissions of around 640,000 tonnes. This figure represents the likely additional emissions that would have been released if our passengers had travelled by car instead of using our trains and buses.
Promoting the benefits of public transport and encouraging passenger growth are therefore key issues in our contribution to climate change.
Reducing Our Own Emissions
We also believe that we must reduce our own emissions in order to retain our competitiveness against other transport modes.
Our Climate Change Strategy (link opens in a new window) sets out this commitment. It evaluates the key opportunities and risks to the business from climate change and explains how we intend to reduce our carbon emissions. In the UK we have set the following reduction targets.
| OUR CARBON DIOXIDE REDUCTION TARGETS | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| April 2008 | April 2012 | April 2020 | |
| UK Bus | 5% on 2006 levels | 8% on 2006 levels | 25% on 2006 levels |
| UK Rail | 5% on 2006 levels | 10% on 2006 levels | 20% on 2006 levels |
In North America we have less available data on performance and trends and we have therefore not set specific reduction targets. Our current goals in North America are:
- to improve our understanding of trends in carbon dioxide emissions;
- to introduce biodiesel where it is cost effective and practical to do so; and
- to use new technology to improve our driver training programmes.
Over 95% of our carbon dioxide emissions arise from fuel combustion in our vehicles. This issue is the key focus of the strategy. In recent years the average fuel efficiency of our vehicles has decreased. In the UK Bus division, European legislation has created a need for additional abatement technology designed to reduce other pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and particulates. It has also led to increased vehicle weights. In the UK Rail division fuel efficiency reductions have been driven by increasing engine power and weight of vehicles.
Reversing this trend is essential in order to achieve our goals. In the short term, we will achieve this through a combination of improvements in engineering, driver training and operational efficiency as well as conversion to 5% biodiesel in the UK Bus division. Progress in this area is already evident with the UK Bus division's new EURO IV engines which are 10-15% more fuel efficient than their predecessors. Furthermore, engineering improvements in our First Great Western High Speed Train fleet are improving fuel efficiency by around 15%. More details of specific initiatives can be found in our Climate Change Strategy.
In the longer term, increasing commercial viability of new hybrid technology is likely to be the key contributor to the 2020 targets.