How about we slow down a little?

This article was originally published in our "Décryptage Mobilité" newsletter.

To receive future articles by email as soon as they are published, Subscribe now. By Célia Foulon – Consultant

Speed goes hand in hand with our modern society. We are constantly seeking to increase productivity, avoid “wasting” our time, and have everything we want right away. But what is the environmental cost of this speed? Does it make sense to keep picking up the pace? For most of us, commuting is a waste of time: we’d like to get there faster. So we step on the gas. It’s no wonder, then, that most drivers on the A62 near Toulouse didn’t take kindly to the speed limit on a section of the highway, reduced to 110 km/h from 130.

And yet, this reduction—in addition to lowering the risk of accidents—has led to a improvement in ambient air quality^[1]. These include, in particular, emissions from nitrogen dioxide (NO2) that would have been reduced, according to Atmo Occitanie. This is good news for the health of local residents, but also for users’ wallets and the climate, since they have saved 9% on fuel by reducing their speed, or 4,020 tCO2e avoided over the course of the year. We hope that studies on reducing the speed limit from 90 to 80 km/h on secondary roads will be just as conclusive! By the way, it’s worth noting that this doesn’t apply only to cars: the IMO (International Maritime Organization) is proposing to reduce the speed of ships in order to limit their fuel consumption and, consequently, their emissions, as we mentioned in a previous newsletter. ^[2]. And it's not just when we're behind the wheel of our car that we're in a hurry. Since the rise of Amazon and other e-commerce giants, we keep breaking speed records: delivery within 48 hours, and sometimes even the same day!

A logistical feat which is impressive and something consumers get used to very quickly. But according to Axios ^[3], Consumer impatience has a significant impact on the environment and the climate. In fact, To ensure express delivery, e-commerce companies must build more and more warehouses near cities. According to a report by CBRE ^[4], in the United States alone, 255 million square meters of warehouse space is currently under construction (equivalent to 3,500 soccer fields). All of this space will have to be cleared, paved, and built upon, and will subsequently consume energy (lighting, heating, air conditioning, etc.) and thus emit greenhouse gases. But the The largest share of GHG emissions is linked to the increase in deliveries, with vehicles carrying fewer and fewer packages. It’s hard to optimize when you have to deliver so quickly… E-commerce was supposed to be more efficient, allowing a truck to deliver to several people rather than having all those people travel (often by car). But The rapid growth of fast delivery is running counter to this idea of optimization. Amazon has, in fact, developed Amazon Air (formerly Amazon Prime Air), a company that manages and operates an ever-growing fleet of cargo planes ^[5], in order to meet the growing demand for express deliveries. The Amazon Air fleet already consisted of 40 aircraft in 2016.

To round out this analysis, we would have liked to give you a rough idea of the GHG emissions generated by Amazon and Amazon Air. Unfortunately, since climate issues are still far from the e-commerce giant’s list of priorities, no information is published on their carbon footprint (nor on their social impact, for that matter…). This situation is gradually changing thanks to the efforts of Amazon employees, who have succeeded in getting the company to publish its carbon footprint in 2019^[6]. So stay tuned! But we can already estimate that Amazon’s emissions amount to tens of millions of metric tons of CO2eq. (UPS, a competing delivery company, reports emissions of over 13 MtCO2eq for its Scope 1 and 2 emissions, and over 33 MtCO2 if Scope 3 is included.) ^[7], with revenue nearly three times lower than Amazon’s…) In any case, the next time you order online, you might ask yourself: Do I really need to receive my package tomorrow, or can it wait until next week? And do I really need this package at all, for that matter—but that’s another topic entirely!

Article written by Célia Foulon – Consultant

Sources: ^[1]20 minutes^[2]Carbon 4^[3]Axios^[4]CBRE Report^[5]BFM Business^[6]Bloomberg^[7]UPS's Response to the 2018 CDP (access with a user account)