In September 2020, Alpensped launched the 50/50 campaign, a climate initiative in which you as a company assume 50 per cent of your customers' compensation costs. Mr. Faggin, how has this campaign started and what climate protection benefits have you already been able to achieve as a result?
Faggin: We started this campaign in September 2020 with great motivation. Unfortunately, it did not get off to as good a start as originally expected. Once again, a financial crisis interfered with climate protection and the pandemic unfortunately did not play into our cards. Due to Corona, we were only able to convince 5 customers to participate last year. However, we see potential for improvement and are confident that we can convince more customers to join the campaign. Together with our customers, we were able to offset 7.3% of our CCF (a total of 18,163 tonnes at Alpensped).
Up to now, Alpensped has pursued the goal of operating in a climate-neutral manner from 2025. Your current sustainability report shows that you have backdated this goal by five years. What are the reasons for this?
Faggin: Our big wish was to be climate-neutral by 2025. On the one hand – like so many – Corona got in the way and we had to reduce our compensation payments a little compared to the last few years.
The most important reason, however, is that we are slower than planned in shifting our transports from road to rail. There are several reasons for this. Among other things, the capacity of the railway lines is currently heavily utilised. But for us, climate neutrality means that the largest share of emissions is actually reduced – this is what we are pursuing with the goal of shifting transport to rail – and only a smaller share is compensated. We are staying on it!
You want to reduce Alpensped's ecological corporate footprint by 50 percent by 2025 and aim for greenhouse gas neutrality by 2030. How would you like to achieve this goal in concrete terms?
Faggin: We see the greatest leverage – as already mentioned above – in the shift of transports from road to rail. For road transports, we will also use increasingly efficient trucks and IT. All remaining greenhouse gases will then be compensated according to the motto: Avoid. Reduce. Compensate.