DB Increases Its Commitment to Greener Future
Image courtesy of Deutsche Bahn
German rail operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) has announced an enhancement to its DB2020 plan for environmental protection targets. Their aims for cutting carbon emissions and increasing renewable energy use have grown by 50% and 30% respectively. DB is a large consumer of renewable energy. All travel with BahnCards, line-based passes, and business travel uses traction networks running 100% on this green power. In all, 100 million km are travelled each year by DB customers using green energy.
DB Carbon Emissions Savings
If achieved, these higher goals for DB carbon emissions could have a big impact. Transport on DB trains replaces an estimated 1.5 billion car journeys and 8 million lorry journeys each year. That is a saving of roughly 12 million tons of atmospheric CO2 per year. Of their climate protection improvements so far, DB Long Distance contributes a great proportion. For each of the past three years, they have been able to reduce their carbon dioxide footprint by 1 million tons.
“We aim to cut specific CO2 emissions across all transport services at our Group by 30% of 2006 levels,”
said Ronald Pofalla, Member of the Management Board for Economic, Legal and Regulatory Affairs at Deutsche Bahn, continuing:
“We are also increasing the share of renewable energy in the traction current mix of DB’s rail transport services to 45%.”
2020 Targets
Mr Pofalla says that the new figures are partly in response to pressure from government for rail companies to improve their carbon emissions according to boosted national guidelines for 2020.
“As Deutsche Bahn, we believe we have a special obligation and are redoubling our efforts at all of our business units and divisions to honour that obligation.”
Other ways of cutting carbon emissions are planned by DB, such as more efficient driving strategies, upgraded rolling stock and improved handling between modes of transport. DB also has a fleet of 700+ cars running on electricity, called Flinkster. It is one of the most sizeable electric car-sharing providers.
