Carbon Footprinting of intermodal European corridors

Connekt/Topsector Logistics, the Netherlands

Assignment

Starting up and profitably running intermodal corridor transport services requires a lot from companies: it takes time and requires relatively high investment costs. A high occupancy rate of multimodal transport service is essential to work in a structurally profitable manner. The Joint Corridors Off Road program supports logistics service providers in starting up these intermodal services. More than 45 intermodal Joint Corridors have now been set up in Europe. In order to assess the contribution to the European Climate deal it is essential to map the CO2 savings through the use of intermodal transport instead of road transport.

Project summary

The program management has asked BCI Global to map the CO2 savings achieved in these intermodal Joint Corridors via BCI’s Carbon Footprint Tool. The Joint Corridors Off Road program collects data and information for each established Joint corridor about the potential use of the individual corridors: how many TEU can be shipped per year via the service over an intermodal corridor, and how much CO2 is emitted with the switch from road to rail/ saved inland shipping? This contributes to the four goals of the program:

  • Improving the availability of multimodal transport services
  • Strengthening the modality choice for shippers, retailers and other users
  • Improving the sustainability of the transport carried out
  • Increasing the scalability of multimodal services: for example from one to several services per week.

Our approach

BCI has been asked to use data to determine what savings in million truck kilometers and tonnes CO2 emissions have been achieved in practice over the last 12 months in all Joint Corridors. The Carbon Footprint Tool has been used for this calculation.

Result

In all multimodal Joint Corridors monitored with the Carbon Footprint tool, the actual volume per corridor transported in 2022 was substantial. The results of the calculations of the actual practical savings in truck kilometers and CO2 emissions in the selected Joint Corridors show that these intermodal services set up by companies are successful. The volume is around 25% lower than expectations, this is partly due to the intermodal market dynamics with shortages in personnel and vehicles/vessels.