Corporate Social Responsibility

CO2 is one of six greenhouse gasses (GHG). The others are methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride. CO2 account for about ¾ of all GHG emissions.

Most studies show a clear GHG advantage when travelling by sea compared to by air. The difference in levels obviously depends on the route and the various ship and aircraft types.

Transportation with a cruise ship for example cannot be compared like-for-like to transport by air. A cruise ship is also a hotel, restaurant and entertainment venue and will therefore also have CO2 emissions related to that.

Most studies show a clear advantage of transporting freight by sea compared to by road. The difference in levels obviously depends on the route and the various ship and truck types being compared.

In many cases ferry routes are located where there are no roads, so the distance travelled by road will often be longer than when traveling by sea.

The total emissions from the DFDS Group is published every year in the annual DFDS CSR Report. Here you can also follow the developments over the years.

Over the past many years, DFDS’ activity has grown, and this comes with an increase in GHG emissions.

So even though DFDS works continuously to reduce GHG emissions, the activity level in the past has exceeded the achieved GHG reductions from the existing business.

Calculating GHG emissions for a single passenger or a single truck between two ports may sound easy, but it is in fact very complicated. Our vessels carry many different types of cargo, and allocating GHG between the various segments is a complicated issue.

Sailing on fixed schedules also affects the utilisation of the vessel. Some sailings are better utilised than others due to seasonality, and this will result in a variation in the GHG emissions per transported unit.

At DFDS we look at minimising our overall GHG emissions. We do this by optimising the individual ships and trucks but also by optimising the entire network. A couple of examples would be:

• Renewal of the fleet
• Route optimisation
• Improvement of network efficiency
• Projects on alternative, low carbon fuels

For DFDS it is important to look at our total GHG emissions, and how we can minimise them. An important tool here is to allocate the vessels to the route where they jointly cause the lowest emission levels. In this process it may well be that a particular route will see an increase year-on-year, but this will be more than offset by lower emissions on other routes.

There are several available ways of calculating GHG emissions from vessels carrying passengers. The results can differ substantially, depending on the method of calculation. Therefore, a direct comparison between two specific ships may not be relevant.

Very few of the ports DFDS calls at offer shore power connections at the berths. Currently (Dec 2019), DFDS uses shore power in Oslo, Gothenburg and Zeebrugge, and Copenhagen will follow in 2020.

As the availability of shore power increases, we expect to increase our usage accordingly.

All studies indicate that transport by sea is the most GHG efficient way of transporting cargo or passengers. It may, however, be possible to find the odd example where this is not always the case.