11 major international companies join forces to accelerate the energy transition in transport and logistics

Photo: CMA CGM Group

AWS, Carrefour Group, CMA CGM Group, Cluster Maritime Français, Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, Engie, Faurecia, Michelin, Schneider Electric, Total and Wärtsilä have formed an international coalition. The Coalition was launched in late 2019 during the French Maritime Economy Conference (Assises de l'Economie de la Mer) and has received the backing of French President Emmanuel Macron.

The Coalition aims to accelerate the development of energy sources and technologies to address the challenges posed by sustainable mobility in the transport and logistics industry by reducing emissions, fighting global warming and protecting biodiversity.

The 11 existing members are pooling their expertise in pursuit of three key goals to achieve genuine technological breakthroughs with tangible results by 2030:

• Unlock a more extensive portfolio of clean energy sources,
• Lower energy consumption per kilometer-equivalent of goods transported,
• Eliminate a substantial proportion of emissions linked to transport and logistics.

Over the past few months, the Coalition has established nine working groups with several dozen participants to devise nine concrete projects that will help shape the energy sources of the future:

• Develop green hydrogen procurement solutions for the transport sector,
• Develop biofuels for the various modes of transport,
• Expand the use of biogas and synthetic gases in transport,
• Replace fossil fuels with green energy across the supply chain,
• Launch zero-emission vehicle pilot projects by the end of 2021,
• Create a digital door-to-door route planning system that calculates the option with the lowest environmental impact,
• Optimize the operational management and loading to step up the energy efficiency of each ton carried,
• Make multimodal platforms more environmentally friendly for logistics applications,
• Consolidate methods used to measure the impact of energy transition projects in transport and logistics.