ICA Gruppen’s road transports to be fossil-free by 2030
By 2030 at the latest, all road transports for ICA Gruppen’s Swedish companies will be fossil-free. In the metropolitan areas in Sweden the ambition is to achieve this goal already by 2025. With a new fuel strategy, ICA Gruppen is charting out a clear direction for developing its environmental work surrounding transports. The strategy takes a comprehensive approach to road transports and also encompasses suppliers’ transports to ICA’s warehouses. To achieve this goal ICA will increase its investments in new technology and fossil-free fuels, among other measures.
The transport sector is undergoing major changes in pace with realisation that the shift from fossil to fossil-free fuels needs to take place quickly in order to reduce the climate impact from transports. Through conscious work in this area, the majority of ICA’s transports today use fossil-free fuels. Additional measures are now needed to maintain and increase these levels. Moreover, for many years ICA has worked with optimisation of transports, both from sustainability and efficiency perspectives, such as by shifting road transports to rail and marine transport as far as possible. This work will continue and will be intensified.
ICA is now taking a further step to reduce the climate impact of transports and has adopted a new fuel strategy with the goal that all goods transports by road will be fossil-free by 2030 at the latest. In the Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö metropolitan areas the ambition is to achieve this already by 2025. The new fuel strategy pertains to all road transports for ICA Gruppen’s companies in Sweden. This entails that both national transports and all European transports from suppliers to ICA’s warehouses are included.
“Development of renewable fuels is making progress, but it needs to be accelerated if we are to achieve our goal of being fossil-free by 2030,” comments Per Strömberg, CEO of ICA Gruppen. “This shift is encumbered by quite a few challenges, where technology in vehicle development, availability and infrastructure for fossil-free fuels, prices of vehicles and fuels, and uncertainty surrounding political decisions are some of the most important.”
ICA will accelerate its investments in new technology and fossil-free fuels, and evaluate how initiatives to increase national production of biofuels can be supported. To provide clear direction both internally and for ICA’s transporters, a tool has been developed to facilitate prioritisation in the transitional work towards reducing climate impact.
Per Strömberg continues: “Fuel prioritisation will guide operations with respect to choice of vehicle type and fuel, where we will rank existing fuels according to their climate impact. We believe in a diversification of fuels, and we will thereby continue with the work we are already doing in testing various types of fossil-free fuels. For example, electric vehicles are something we are studying more closely.”
For more information
ICA Gruppen press service, Telephone number: +46 (0)10 422 52 52
ica.se and icagruppen.se
ICA Gruppen AB (publ) is a leading retail company with a focus on food and health. The Group includes ICA Sweden and Rimi Baltic which mainly conduct grocery retail, ICA Real Estate which owns and manages properties, ICA Bank which offers financial services and Apotek Hjärtat which conducts pharmacy operations. For more information see icagruppen.se
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