Cape Town – Transnet customers and users can now calculate their carbon emission savings with a new app, the state-owned rail transport company said on Thursday.
“We have developed an innovative new carbon calculator app that will allow [our] users to calculate their carbon emissison savings and [which] will be useful for corporate reporting on transport carbon emissions,” said Transnet spokesperson, Mboniso Sigonyela.
Transnet developed the Carbon Calculator App in collaboration with the Wits University-based Johannesburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE).
“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,” Sigonyela said.
The app is available on Apple, Windows and Android devices.
The primary purpose of this app, he said, was 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”.
Sigonyela said rail was “three to four times more energy efficient than road per tonne of cargo transported”.
According to Sigonyela, rail offered businesses a cleaner, safer, and cheaper freight logistics solution as well as lowering the cost of doing business and alleviating challenges such as congestion, road accidents and pollution associated with heavy use of roads.
Announced ahead of the new carbon tax which the country is set to implement in 2016, Sigonyela added: “As the owner and operator of the country’s rail network, Transnet has undertaken to increase its market share of freight movement by promoting a modal shift from road to rail, and will report annually on the associated carbon emission savings.”
The proposed carbon tax rate is currently R120 a metric ton of CO2 equivalent, to be levied by government on the use of fossil fuels.
ANA