GOTHENBURG: Every year tens of thousands of containers of production material destined for Volvo Cars factories are carried across the world’s oceans on container ships. From now on, most of these seafaring journeys are made with renewable fuel instead of traditional fossil fuel.

Volvo said it is the first global car maker to announce such a switch.

"We’ll achieve an immediate reduction in fossil CO2 emissions from intercontinental ocean freight by 55,000 tonnes over a year," it said in a statement.

"Thanks to the renewable fuel, CO2 emissions are reduced by at least 84 per cent compared to fossil fuel. The reduction is equivalent to the CO2 emissions of a full truck driving around the equator about 1,200 times."

The fuel used is Fatty Acid Methyl Esters (FAME) and is based on renewable and sustainable sources, mainly waste cooking oil.

Volvo would use renewable fuel for inbound ocean container transports of production material destined for manufacturing plants based in Europe and the Americas, as well as all spare parts distribution made globally by ocean container transports.



“Renewable fuel is not the end game for removing CO2 from the world’s ocean freight needs,” said Volvo chief operating officer and deputy CEO Javier Varela.

“Yet this initiative shows that we can act now and implement solutions that achieve significant results during the wait for long-term technological alternatives.

“We don’t view this initiative as a competitive advantage,” said Varela.

“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. We all have a responsibility to act.”

Volvo has been working on this initiative together with its logistics partners Maersk, Kuehne+Nagel and DB Schenker. These logistics service providers have from June 1 switched to renewable fuel for equivalent energy needed for all container transports done for Volvo.

When renewable fuel is not available on a specific shipment, its 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. The methodology, called mass-balancing, is third-party audited regularly.

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