EMEA DECARBONIZES ITS TRANSPORT

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In September 2019, Saint-Gobain announced its objective of carbon neutrality by 2050. Part of the Scope 3 emissions are integrated into that objective, particularly the purchases of materials and energy, and the upstream and downstream transportation. After participating to the Saint-Gobain decarbonized transport working group in Q4 2020, Bastien Olivier (Supply Chain Director EMEA) and I defined the EMEA C02 transport roadmap highlighting all possible solutions to reduce the carbon footprint from our value chain.

One of these solutions consisted of replacing two diesel trucks, both single deck trailers, by a liquefied gas truck (LNG) powered by biogas with a double deck trailer – for the daily round trip between our European Distribution Center in Born (NL) and our plant in Conflans (FR).

In addition to substantial financial savings for both countries, this new green solution tested since March 2021 will yield a CO2 emissions reduction of 725 tonnes on a full year basis. That’s a reduction of -90% vs. diesel trucks! As the first feedbacks are really positive, we are considering deploying this kind of solution (and also hydrogen powered trucks) on many other lanes within our facilities network.

Additionally, from May 2021 we’ll be testing inland waterway transport – transportation of 125 containers per year from the port in Le Havre to our Conflans plant via water transport (barges). This could enable us to reduce our CO2 emissions (on this distribution route) by 7,5, with no extra-costs.

Our capacity to reduce our CO2 emissions also depends on our capacity to measure them. The implementation of the digital C02 emissions assessment tool “EcoTransIT” will be launched in Q4 2021, in a partnership approach with all our carriers and freight forwarders. It will bring greater visibility and better reliability of the impact and progress from our transportation decarbonisation plans.