Reducing our climate and environmental footprint

The transition to emission-free operation at Ruter takes place as old transport contracts expire and are replaced with new ones, in tenders where environmental and climate considerations are either set as minimum requirements or awarded as extra points in allotment criteria. The operators compete on price, but equally important is that the tender competitions revolve around delivering bids that are attractive to customers and good for the environment.

On 27 June 2022, Ruter signed two new contracts with Unibus and Nobina for bus transport in eastern Oslo, which commence on 10 December 2023. As of that date, all Oslo contracts have been renewed, which means during 2023 virtually all buses on fixed routes in Oslo will be electric.

The first boat arrived in December 2021, and during 2022 all the five new electric island boats were put into service – although somewhat delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The new boats are larger and can accommodate far more passengers than the old ones. Unfortunately, the start-up phase was demanding, with many departures being cancelled.
The problems were due to both crew and materiel.

All the boats were delayed from the shipyard in Turkey, which affected the crew situation. There are strict and mandatory training and competence requirements associated with the new electric boats, and it takes time to train new crew.

Once the delivery was delayed, training was also delayed. These teething problems meant that much of the traffic was carried out with one of the old boats. These teething problems were over by December 2022, and boat operations began progressing according to plan.

MS Baronen and MS Baronessen, which currently run a regular route in the Oslo Fjord, will be converted to zero-emission boats by installing a solution for battery swapping in the vessels. This contract was signed in 2022, and the boats will be in service by the summer of 2024.

The boats will be converted to zero-emission boats at the Brødrene Aa Shipyard in Hyen and be ready for commissioning in the summer of 2024.

Ruter defines emission-free operation as an offer carried out with vehicles or vessels where there are neither greenhouse gas emissions, NOx, nor particles from the vehicle’s engine. Emission-free public transport not only means lower greenhouse gas emissions, but also less noise and cleaner air.

For the new contracts in Oslo which start in 2022 and 2023, emission-free operation was a minimum requirement, and biogas was not permitted. Biogas is a valuable resource, but since biogas is used in combustion engines that make noise and emit NOx and particles, Ruter does not consider biogas to be emission-free.

Viken County Council decided in 2021 that biogas should be prioritised as a fuel together with electricity and hydrogen, and that what is chosen must be assessed specifically in each case based on climate and environmental benefits, local conditions and regional development needs.

Viken’s decision challenges Ruter’s goal of emission-free public transport. Ruter will work on the procurement of bus services in Follo throughout 2023. For these procurements, biogas will be permitted, and the fuel matrix for the Norwegian Government Agency for Financial Management, which recommends prioritising zero-emission technology and biogas in public procurements where transport is included, will be used as a basis for evaluating the tenders. Viken’s decision corresponds to the Storting decision to remove the state barriers to increased production and use of biogas.

By the end of 2023, virtually all public transport in Oslo will be emission-free*

By the end of 2028, all public transport throughout Ruter’s areas will be emission-free

* The fact that we do not reach 100% emission-free operation is due to circumstances beyond Ruter’s control. Two bridges currently make it impossible to operate electric buses on Line 42 (the clearance height on Lysaker bridge is too low for today’s electric buses) and Line 85 (Ulvøya bridge must be reinforced or rebuilt).

With our new climate accounting setup, which is more in line with the GHG Protocol than previous reports, direct emissions from driving and sailing are not as clearly visible. We know that this is something many are interested in, and therefore have a separate graph and table for direct emissions from driving and sailing below. Note that the same emissions are included in the complete emission account under Ruter’s Climate Accounts.

Direct emissions from operations include exhaust emissions from Ruter’s buses and boats that burn fossil diesel. Ruter has set an ambition of emission-free operation throughout our area by 2028. We are well on our way to achieving this goal, and by 2023 we will almost reach the finish line in Oslo. Operational emissions have decreased every year from 2018 to 2021, in line with the phasing-in of electric vehicles and the use of bio-diesel and biogas. For 2022, however, operational emissions have risen significantly in Viken. This is due to Ruter’s phasing out of biodiesel.

Due to increased taxes and changes in biofuel sales requirements, Ruter decided towards the end of 2021 to revert to the use of fossil diesel for large parts of our offer. Changes in the road use tax and the biodiesel sales requirement would have resulted in considerable additional costs and thus major cuts in route services. The Municipality of Oslo chose to finance the continued use of biodiesel in its area, until the bus service in Oslo becomes fully electric in 2023.

In any case, the design of the sales requirement means that the climate effect from a societal perspective is zero if Ruter had continued with biofuels. The sales requirement requires companies selling fuel to have 17% of their total sales in biofuel. This means that if Ruter had maintained our use of biodiesel, the consequence would have been reduced blending for other customers, and thus no emission reduction.

Below is an overview of the direct greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the electricity consumption, from the operation of Ruter’s services. These emissions are also included in the complete climate accounts below.

Note that we are now, retroactively, separating biogenic emissions from consumption of ordinary diesel according to average blending.

As of 2022, we are expanding our climate accounts to include emissions from the production of new materiel, i.e. new buses, trams, boats and other vehicles. We are also establishing a clearer classification between direct emissions (scope 1), indirect emissions resulting from energy use (scope 2) and other indirect greenhouse gas emissions (scope 3). We now also include additional greenhouse gases beyond CO2 (converted to CO2e). These changes have been made to ensure that reporting complies with the guidelines for the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol).

We report our emissions according to the GHG Protocol’s approach to operational control. As a management company, all significant activities are carried out by our operators. As operators have a significant influence on how they want to provide their services, we do not have full operational control over this activity. Emissions from operator activities are therefore defined as our Indirect Emissions (scope 3).

This means that Ruter in practice has no direct emissions (scope 1), and that scope 2 only includes the management company’s consumption of electricity and district heating for our office premises. It is important to point out that this is purely a technical accounting consequence, and that we naturally take responsibility for the overall emission inventory, including scope 3.

Under scope 3 we find the largest emissions for which Ruter is responsible. Given our organizational structure, these emissions are mainly in Category 1 of the GHG Protocol: «Purchase of goods and services». Of the other 14 categories, only business travel and employee commuting are relevant, as everything else falls under category 1. However, employee commuting is considered insignificant, as a combination of Ruter’s central location near the central train station in Oslo, as well as free tickets for employees, probably results in a very high proportion of public transport, cycling and walking. In the link below, you can download detailed information about greenhouse gas emissions, NOx emissions, energy consumption, fuel consumption and mileage for buses, boats, trams and metros in Oslo and Viken/Akershus.

In 2022, we have worked to calculate emissions from the production of new vehicles and vessels; i.e. trams, metro cars, buses and boats. This is complex work where unfortunately there is a lack of standards and good emission factors. The consequence of this immaturity is that there will be considerable uncertainty associated with the precision of the reported figures. Although the estimates are uncertain, we nevertheless believe it is appropriate to include these figures in our emission accounts: it shows that we have significant emissions associated with the production of the operating equipment and provides a good starting point for understanding the totality of our indirect emissions.

In the years ahead, we will work with the supply chain to improve data to reduce uncertainty.

One consequence of the fact that we now include emissions from the production of vehicles and vessels in our climate accounts is that there may be large variations in Ruter’s total emissions from year to year, depending on how many new vehicles are put into operation each year. For example, 2022 has been a year in which a lot of new materiel has been put into operation, while 2021 was a year in which relatively few vehicles entered traffic. In 2022, the following vehicles and vessels became operational: 96 new buses in the Oslo South area, four new island boats, 15 new trams and 162 new minibuses for special transport. In total, this gives 41 406 tons of CO2e in production emissions for 2022, while the corresponding figure for 2021 was 4412 tons CO2e.

All figures are in tons of CO2e