Sustainable Freight

 

Toll

 

　

 

Toll is the Asia-Pacific region’s leading provider of integrated logistics, generating an-nual revenue of $8.7 billion in 2013. Toll set the ambitious target of reducing its Aus-tralian greenhouse gas intensities by 20% of 2010 by 2020. To direct this goal Toll introduced its Smarter Green program in 2010. Smarter Green responds to the key impacts that Toll operations have on the environment, including the impact of cli-mate change on its business and energy use.

 

Under Smarter Green, Toll is setting targets to reduce greenhouse gas intensities and developing comprehensive suites of initiatives for its diverse operations to improve environmental performance. Toll is putting in place key performance indicators to give it confidence that the company is progressing to achieving its goals, and they are sharing the story of their journey to sustainable logistics and transport with their stakeholders.

 

In the short term, Toll’s plan is to apply new technologies and practises to reduce their consumption of non-renewable resources and greenhouse gas emissions. In the long term Toll plan to make greater use of renewable energy sources as they become viable as well as through upgrades to their fleet.

 

As part of the Smarter Green program Toll has actively engaged many programs in the aim to reduce their emissions to 2010 levels. A sample of their programs includes:

 

Smarter Driving – by training their drivers to better anticipate the driving task, keep within ideal engine rev ranges and minimise vehicle idling behaviour, breaking and gear changes, Toll testing estimates that fuel efficiency and associated emissions can be improved by up to 10%.

 

Biodiesel Trials - Toll is actively trialling biodiesel blends (derived from agricultural and waste products) in their local delivery, line haul, and marine operations. They have also been involved in testing biodiesel through their collaborative membership of the Green Truck Partnership, an Australian Government industry program designed to objectively evaluate clean fuel technologies.

 

Their trials have investigated the impacts of biodiesel B20 blends (conventional diesel blended with 20 per cent biodiesel) on fuel efficiency and emission performance. Tri-alling has found that blends were just as efficient as conventional diesel, and that biodiesel produces almost no tailpipe emissions. As such, a vehicle running on B20 can be expected to achieve GHG emissions reductions of close to 20 per cent at the tailpipe.

 

Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) - Toll IPEC is actively trialling CNG in its local delivery operations. The trial began with a small fleet of five vehicles in Toll IPEC’s Canberra operations, and achieved a reduction in harmful NOx (nitrous oxides) emissions of 71 per cent. The success of this trial has led to another 20 vehicles being evaluated in Toll IPEC’s operations in metropolitan Melbourne. Natural gas is particularly appeal-ing in Australia due to large domestic reserves and lower and more stable prices than diesel. CNG vehicles also emit lower NOx, SOx (sulphur oxides) and particulate emis-sions, all of which are harmful to public health. CNG’s low energy density compared to petrol or diesel means it requires more storage volume on an energy-equivalence basis. The difference in GHG emissions is dependent on the engine efficiency and the transport task of the vehicle. When payload and chassis space are taken into account, CNG is most suitable for short-haul freight applications which typically have shorter distances between refuelling.

 

Greater utilisation of Higher Productivity Vehicles - Compared with standard trucks moving 1000 tonnes of freight, HPVs make significant savings through increased pay-load, reduced fuel consumption and GHG emissions, reduced driver demand, less-ened road impacts, fewer truck trips, and decreased congestion. Toll’s benchmarking illustrates reductions in GHG intensity of 21 per cent for B-doubles and 35 per cent for B-triples over a six axle semi-trailer. Toll is constantly working with the relevant authorities to progress their roll-out in its various markets.

 

Despite the aim of Toll and other similar organisations to reduce their emissions, increases in total emissions are unavoidable for a rapidly growing company. By the end of the financial year 2010, Toll reported Co2 emissions of 533,000 tonnes for that year, but for the same period 2013 CO2 emissions had risen to 688,201 tonnes as reported by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). This increase is largely attributed to Toll Group’s business acquisitions.

 

A more accurate index for Toll emission reductions would be relative GHG intensities of their operations. Results for Toll’s Aus-tralian Carbon Intensity Index show a 0.85 per cent reduction in FY11 and 3.47 per cent reduction in FY12 in their carbon intensity when compared against the reference year (FY10).

 

Furthermore to this, by the end of the financial year 2011 Toll made a public report to the CDP along with 72 other firms from the ASX top 100. The CDP released its environmental performance ranking and Toll joined the CDP leaders’ board with a score of 76. For FY12, Toll had made further improvements in their results, gaining a score of 82, before improving again for FY2013 to a score of 83.