Corporate Responsibility

Coach	Bus	Train

Key Highlights

We have made a number of significant advances this year, of which our highlights are:

• 6% decrease in fleet energy use at National Express East Anglia
• Introduction of regenerative braking at c2c leading to a 20% reduction in electricity use
• 29% decrease in energy usage at our West Midlands Travel bus garages, and a total decrease of 37% over three years
• Train depot energy consumption decrease of 25% over the last two years
• Becoming the first UK transport group to switch to green tariff electricity. All the energy we use across our 300 sites, including stations, maintenance facilities and offices is now renewably sourced. The contract also provides electricity for the Midland Metro in the West Midlands, resulting in the line becoming the first light rail system in the UK to be effectively emission free.
• Founder member of the ‘Together’ Campaign, an exciting collaboration with other businesses and NGO’s with the target of saving a tonne of carbon in every household in the UK. Working collectively, the campaign seeks to offer solutions to consumers to encourage sustainable behaviour change
• Participation in the WWF’s One Planet Business Coalition helped strengthen our relationship with other key businesses concerned with tackling climate change

Targets

One of the real challenges we face is how to improve the efficiency of our vehicles. It is extremely difficult to set a reduction target for our operations for a number of reasons.

Firstly, new diesel vehicles which meet the latest standards for exhaust emissions are less fuel efficient than the older vehicles they replace. This trade-off is well known and means that our baseline emissions will increase moving forward. For bus and coaches we are seeing improved fuel economy in Euro IV engines compares to Euro III engines but this is not yet at the level of the Euro I or II engines.

Secondly, there are limited options for improving fuel economy. Diesel-hybrid technology has great potential for delivering a step change in reducing both CO₂ and exhaust pollutants and we are currently working with TfL on trialing this technology. However it is unlikely to be cost-effective before 2012.

Finally, average speed has a big impact on fuel economy. As with exhaust pollutants (see chart in local air quality section) fuel economy decreases the slower the vehicles travel and the more they have to stop and start in cities. Stationary traffic causes twice as much pollution as a vehicle moving at 20mph. Even a relatively modest increase in speed can have a marked effect on fuel economy. Bus and coach priority measures are therefore important for reducing emissions as well as growing patronage.

Overall there are huge net benefits of using public transport compared to other modes of transport (see charts above) and we are committed to growing our services and encourage customers out of cars or planes. We hope to grow our total operation and as such our total emissions of CO₂. When hybrids are commercially available we will be able to set longer term targets with more confidence. This does not mean we are complacent about the need to ensure we operate as efficiently as possible but there are genuine constraints in setting robust targets. Moving forward we will be working with our supply chain to reduce the weight of vehicles.

Our announcement to suspend our UK biodiesel bus trial using “first generation” biofuel reflects the seriousness with which we look at our own impact on the environment. Our concerns centred over whether the benefits of these first generation biofuels outweighed the impacts with respect to greenhouse gas emissions and broader sustainability issues. We are not dismissing the role they may play in the future, but it is vital that we wait for issues relating to the sustainability of supply to be resolved.

Total GHG Emissions from UK Operations (tCO2e)

Breakdown of Green House Emissions by Source(%)

ECCM has carried out a Climate Change Impact Assessment for National Express Group. Download a PDF copy of the assessment