ÖBB Rail Cargo Group and WWF are cooperating on a transition to more sustainable freight transport methods

The World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) is one of the world's most important environmental organizations. Their offices are across eighty countries, and they realize species and climate protection projects with over 6,000 full-time employees in a total of 150 countries. Globally, almost 6 million people support the WWF as sponsors. WWF Austria has been active in nature conservation since 1963.

Roughly 30% of national CO2 emissions come from traffic systems. Freight transport, the truck (road) transport is a main cause of the increasing estimates.  EU needs to be CO2 neutral by 2050, and Austria has to reach neutrality by 2040. Moving freight from roads to railroads is, therefore, crucial to have a chance to achieve these goals. Additional shifts of transport methods to railroads get seen as the only environmentally friendly option.

As part of the WWF CLIMATE GROUP partnership with the ÖBB, discussions about the future were held, titled “Future of the rail: Shifting freight traffic to rail is one of the fastest and most efficient ways to counter the increasing CO2 emissions in the To fight the transport sector. "

 In his presentation, Clemens Först, board spokesman of the ÖBB Rail Cargo Group (RCG) emphasized the digitization and innovation projects of the RCG, “Together we can transport more goods by rail than by road." Europe needs the railways as part of the solution to the climate crisis."

It is crucial to mention that the stakeholders also discussed the topics of Shortages of staff, Infrastructure and its development, and digitalization, among other things.

Digitization is also a key to making workplaces more appealing and easier to operate. One of the digital improvements was the introduction of the digital automatic clutch. The digitization measures presented by the RCG to simplify access to the rail system, among other things, were considered positive and achievable. Low-threshold, user-specific systems are essential to achieve maximum customer usage. More correct and crucial as all digitization steps in the rail sector, are they do not remove the need to set up more loading points for rail freight transport.