Swedish car manufacturer Volvo has decided to transport material for the production of its vehicles across the world’s oceans mostly on container ships using renewable fuels.
Volvo Cars said that it transports tens of thousands of containers of production material each year and that the switch would achieve an immediate reduction in fossil CO2 emissions from intercontinental ocean freight by 55,000 tonnes over a year.
Renewable fuels, Volvo stated, reduce CO2 emissions by at least 84% compared to fossil fuels. The fuel is fatty acid methyl esters (FAME), based on renewable and sustainable sources, mainly waste cooking oil.
This fuel will be used for inbound ocean container transports of production material set for manufacturing plants based in Europe and the Americas, as well as all spare parts distribution made globally by ocean container transports.
“We don’t view this initiative as a competitive advantage. On the contrary, we want to spark other car makers into action as well, to increase demand for carbon-efficient ocean transports and to establish renewable fuels as a mid-term solution that works,” says Javier Varela, Volvo Cars CEO and Deputy CEO.
Volvo’s partners in the initiative will be Maersk, Kuehne+Nagel, and DB Schenker. As a result, they switched to renewable fuel for all container transports done for Volvo Cars.
“When renewable fuel is not available on a specific shipment, our renewable fuel allocation is instead used by the logistics partner for another customer’s route elsewhere, so the overall cut in fossil fuel use is kept on par with actual use in container vessels,” Volvo explained.
