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TREND
ENVIRONMENT
WORK SAVES
MONEY
European highways are carrying an increasing
amount of freight, causing environmental changes
we see today. Businesses are focusing on the problem
of carbon dioxide emissions, which is reducing
the environmental impact and saving money.
TEXT MIKAEL GIANUZZI PHOTO GETTY IMAGES
ACCORDING TO the Stern report, the
British government’s review of the economics
of climate change, about 14 percent
of all emissions in the world come
from the transportation of freight. Road
transportation accounts for 10 percent.
However, there are no statistics on what
percentage of these road transportation
emissions in turn comes from freight
transportation. An estimate based on
European conditions and statistics, with
personal automobiles accounting for 60
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percent of carbon dioxide emissions from
road transportation and freight accounting
for 40 percent, suggests that road
freight transportation accounts for something
on the order of 4 to 5 percent of all
carbon dioxide emissions in the world.
“Greater growth leads to more freight
transportation, and there is no single solution
to the carbon dioxide problem,”
says Åke Sjödin, transportation specialist
at the ivl Swedish Environmental
Research Institute. “Rather, what is
needed here is a series of measures to
break the trend.” He thinks one of the
most important measures for quickly
lowering emissions is to reduce the use
of fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel.
“Today, carbon dioxide cannot be
eliminated, so what’s needed is the introduction
of new technology and new
fuels to reduce the emissions of fossil
carbon dioxide by freight traffi c,” Sjödin
says. “To speed this introduction, what’s
needed most of all is the establishment of
effective means of control, because the
technical solutions already exist.”
Most countries in the world have signed
on to the United Nations’ goal of reducing
greenhouse gas emissions. The long-term
goal means in practice that global emissions
must be cut in half by 2050.
In the business world, there has been
growing awareness of climate problems,
and an increasing number of companies
have not just adopted an environmental
policy but have also turned their words