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South Africa’s state-owned freight and logistics company, Transnet, has developed a carbon calculator app that allows users to calculate carbon emissions savings when they move freight on rail vs. road.
The company statement said the app would be useful for corporate reporting on transport carbon emissions. As the owner and operator of the country’s rail network, Transnet has been promoting a modal shift from road to rail, and will report annually on the associated carbon emission savings. The advantage of rail, they say, is that it is three to four times more energy efficient than road per ton of cargo transported.
South Africa is set to introduce a carbon tax in 2016 in an attempt to account for the environmental cost
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of greenhouse gas emissions and incentivize the use of cleaner energy sources.
The Carbon Calculator App was developed by Transnet in collaboration with the Johannesburg Centre for Software Engineering, based at Wits University. Its primary purpose is to enable Transnet customers to calculate the carbon emissions benefit of electing to move specific tonnages of cargo in South Africa by rail instead of road. The calculator applies the relevant rail tractive power (electric or diesel) of each route to calculate the carbon footprint of tonnage.
Users can select a specific origin and destination, the commodity type and its weight to calculate the emission savings when transporting cargo by rail instead of road, according to the statement.
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