Lufthansa Cargo presents plans for green airfreight
At its third Climate Care Conference in Frankfurt, Lufthansa Cargo reaffirmed its ambitious plans to reduce sustainably the impact of its activities on the environment. Addressing 200 representatives at the conference from the logistics business, the scientific community and the media, Board Member Operations Dr. Karl-Rudolf Rupprecht emphasised Lufthansa Cargo's pioneering role in green logistics: We are on track with our ambitious aim of reducing specific emissions by a fourth by 2020 and have already achieved the first ten percentage points towards that objective. We are working on numerous measures and literally leaving no stone unturned - in our flight operations alone, we have developed more than 50 measures to curb the fuel burn of our aircraft.
The venue for the conference, attended by leading climate researchers like Mojib Latif, was a fitting choice: The Frankfurt Senckenberg Museum of Natural History with its large dinosaurs and concurrent climate exhibition illustrating the rich biodiversity of life on earth and the changes the planet has undergone over millions of years.
The speakers concurred in underlining the impact the logistics industry has on the environment. The industry was equally unanimous in advocating even greater commitment to the goal of more environment-friendly aviation. Lufthansa Cargo Board Member Dr. Karl-Rudolf Rupprecht urged the attendees to step up their common efforts: Only when all partners in the transport chain as well as scientists and politicians pull together will we have the best chance of massively reducing the burden on the environment.
Transparency must be vastly improved so that transport decisions can be influenced more in future by their impact on the environment, said Dr. Rupprecht. Comparability between the airlines is often difficult. Not every carrier, for example, releases data on specific emissions.
Dr. Rupprecht is expecting a substantial reduction in specific emissions at Lufthansa Cargo from the coming winter when the first two of five Boeing 777 freighters on its order books are scheduled to enter into service. The most efficient and quietest freighter of its class generates around 20 per cent fewer emissions than the existing MD-11 freighters in the fleet.
The Frankfurt conference was also the venue again for the presentation of this year's Climate Care Awards. Under the motto More ideas for less emissions, the cargo carrier confers the environmental awards on company customers and members of the staff for notable contributions to environmental protection.
First prize in the customer category went to the Hellmann logistics services company for the successful use of LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) engines in its fleet of vehicles. Other customer awards for environmental commitment went to the Austrian forwarder Gebrüder Weiss GmbH and the Group 7 international logistics company from Munich.
In the staff category, Oliver Schatz and Dieter Aulehla from the Lufthansa Cargo logistics center in Frankfurt took first prize for an innovative application with SmartPads. Their use of the minicomputers in freight handling will save more than 350,000 sheets of paper each year in Frankfurt alone.
Responsibility for the climate and the environment is inherent in the corporate culture across the entire Lufthansa Group. Alongside its ongoing participation in climate research projects over the past 20 years and long-term trials with biosynthetic kerosene, the Group is currently engaged on a fuel efficiency project aimed at utilising every possible option of reducing the fuel consumption of aircraft and the concomitant CO2-emissions.