Air quality control

We have set ourselves the objective of reducing the soot particulate emissions of our own rail and road vehicles by 55% by 2020 compared to 2010. These particulate emissions are especially dangerous to health and are caused by burning fuel.

The ongoing modernization of our vehicle fleet is our main action in this area. The high electrification rate of our rail network plays a major role here because the vehicles themselves do not produce local pollutant emissions, except for particles; the generation of traction current only causes decentralized emissions in power plants. In the year under review, we reduced combustion-­related particulate emissions by 56.1% (previous year: 53.4%), meaning we reached our target for particulate emissions earlier than planned. The calculation is based on the fuel consumption and composition of our vehicle fleets according to emissions categories. We have been exclusively using low-­emissions Bvehicles and construction machinery NO. 11 at our urban construction sites since mid-2018.

DB Groupʼs combustion-­related pollutant emissions are largely influenced by our ocean freight activities – for example, these activities emit over 78% of soot particles. We also constantly strive to make improvements in this area in cooperation with carriers. Furthermore, we launched a low sulfur program that allows our customers to move their container transport in unregulated ports to low-­sulfur marine diesel for a small surcharge.

Combustion-­related, well-­to-­wheel (WTW), scope 1 – 3
Previous year’s figures adjusted.