Key takeaways:
- Norfolk Southern is permitting freight clients to purchase Environmental Attribute Certificates, which they’ll use to cut back Scope 3 emissions.
- Comparable schemes exist already in aviation and maritime transport.
- The corporate has a objective of getting lower-carbon fuels account for 7 p.c of its gasoline combine by 2027 and 20 p.c by 2034.
A serious U.S. railroad is becoming a member of the aviation and maritime transport industries in launching a book-and-claim scheme to assist clients cut back freight emissions.
Norfolk Southern, which operates greater than 3,000 locomotives and strikes round 7 million shipments yearly, unveiled its RailGreen system final week.
Like different book-and-claims schemes, RailGreen is designed to permit any buyer to pay for and declare Scope 3 advantages. When biodiesel is utilized in a Norfolk Southern locomotive, the corporate generates an Environmental Attribute Certificates (EAC) for each ton of emissions prevented. Prospects then buy EACs and depend them towards Scope 3 emissions. The certificates can’t be used twice or handed to a different firm.
The scheme was impressed partly by an equal maritime challenge often called Ship Inexperienced that was developed by maritime shipper Hapag-Lloyd, mentioned Josh Raglin, Norfolk Southern’s chief sustainability officer. The Sustainable Aviation Consumers Alliance operates the same scheme for air journey.
Displacing diesel
Norfolk Southern’s biodiesel can be produced from vegetable oils, animal fat and used cooking oil, mentioned Raglin. The corporate’s locomotives wouldn’t have to be modified to work with the gasoline — supplied that the lower-carbon different doesn’t make up greater than 20 p.c of the combination. Norfolk Southern is engaged on introducing one other different gasoline, often called renewable diesel, that may utterly exchange fossil diesel. Raglin mentioned the corporate has a objective of getting these lower-carbon fuels account for 7 p.c of its gasoline combine by 2027 and 20 p.c by 2034.
Norfolk Southern is aiming to make use of 9 million gallons of biodiesel this yr, which, if licensed by means of the RailGreen system, would generate EACs equivalent to 70,000 tons of CO2. Raglin declined to reveal the precise price of an EAC, however mentioned that it might be lower than $100.
The scheme builds upon Norfolk Southern’s emissions monitoring expertise, which checks gasoline burn in locomotives each quarter-hour. The information is used to report emission shares to particular person clients, adjusted for the burden of freight they’re shifting, distance travelled and different components.
Intermodal impacts
Gas switching initiatives are value pursuing as a result of no new expertise is required to implement the schemes, famous Scott Bernstein, founding father of the Middle for Neighborhood Know-how and an professional on railroads and different facets of regional and concrete planning. The draw back, he added, is that they’ll distract from investing in additional consequential modifications: “Typically gasoline switching finally ends up being an excuse for not making capital investments in a extra environment friendly type of system general.”
One instance that Bernstein advocates for is intermodal freight, through which transport networks are redesigned to shift the burden from street to rail. The thought was the topic of a 2023 report by the Environmental Protection Fund, to which Bernstein contributed. As a result of emissions from rail are round 75 p.c decrease than the equal from trucking, shifting freight from one modality to a different can produce large advantages, whatever the gasoline used.
“Going from truck to coach might be a a lot higher influence on decarbonization than staying with practice and simply altering the gasoline ingredient,” mentioned Invoice Loftis, a provide chain professional, writer of the EDF report and proprietor of Provide Chain Ecology, a consultancy. “It’s certain to be as a result of rail is tremendously extra environment friendly than truck.”
