Seeking Green Opportunities? Think Rail

For those looking for "green investments", the answer may just be rolling through cities and towns all over America.

For instance, Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNI) recently announced:

BNSF Railway Company today announced that it has developed a new tool that allows shippers to quantify the amount of carbon emissions that can be saved for those route segments on rail instead of over the road. Overall, shipping by BNSF can save Americans an average of 200 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per American per year, which is the equivalent of planting 37 trees for each person living in the United States.

"Earlier this year, BNSF provided its customers with customized letters that analyzed their total rail carbon footprint and savings compared to movements of those shipments over the road," said John Lanigan, executive vice president and chief marketing officer. "Because of the overwhelming positive customer response to this yearly analysis, we wanted to provide our customers with a tool they can use to determine environmental benefits before they make their transportation choice."

The new BNSF Carbon Estimator tool bases its calculations on commodity type and weight, and distance traveled by rail. It also takes into consideration the different fuel efficiency of trailer, container or carload shipments, and incorporates the required truck movements to and from BNSF intermodal facilities. The calculations used by the BNSF Carbon Estimator and its accuracy have been verified by Clear Carbon Consulting.

"In addition to conserving scarce energy resources, rail provides tremendous value in reducing the country's overall transportation emissions and carbon footprint," Lanigan said. "In 2008, BNSF reduced our nation's greenhouse gas emissions by 30 million metric tons by moving shipments over the rail rather than on our nation's crowded highways. We hope this new tool helps our customers make greener transportation choices. After all, if you can't calculate it, you can't change it."

Consider this:
Association of American Railroads -Research Report Smart Effective Way to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions J...
Here is one thing to consider. It seems that some type of "Cap & Trade" system is coming down the pike. Could shipping by rail be part of it, in order to reduce emissions? We know that it does, we just need to know if / how it is included in the legislation. If it is, that could be a huge boon to railroads, all of them. The first ones to look at would be those that serve industrial markets as those would be the heaviest emitters and thus those most likely to use rail in some fashion for carbon reduction means.

I have not looked any further into it other than postulating and won't until the legislation gets out of the amoeba stage and into something tangible. At that point though, it does bear a much closer look because it very well could cause a substantial and permanent change in rail demand.


Disclosure: No positions

Comments

[user396040:]

The only problem I have with this thesis is that the railroads derive an enormous amount of their revenue from coal shipments and, if coal use is reduced by climate change regulation, they could take a big hit.

Jun 23 01:55 PM

[jerrydd:]

RR should pay for their carbon use too as everyone should. I use little but now subsidize oil, coal in my, your income taxes by about their price, $1.50-2.00/gal for oil and $30-50/ton for coal in direct and indirect subsidies.

Jun 23 02:48 PM

[Old Trader:]

user,

The amount of traffic generated by coal varies from RR to RR. If I remember correctly, BNI has a fairly high amount of coal traffic from the Powder River mines.

Given that things like rail and trucking traffic are considered leading indicators of an economic turn around, I think I'd be inclined to wait until things are actually getting closer to "turning around", rather than just wallowing along in a deep trough before putting serious money into the sector.


On Jun 23 01:55 PM user396040 wrote:

> The only problem I have with this thesis is that the railroads derive
> an enormous amount of their revenue from coal shipments and, if coal
> use is reduced by climate change regulation, they could take a big
> hit.

Jun 23 09:30 PM

[Jimmy / pus...:]

I am a happy owner of UNP. Any other parties suggest other railroad plays? Please..............

Jun 23 10:30 PM

[isaac the t...:]

Check out CNI- canadian national rail. Coast to coast and down to the the Gulf. Earnings in C dollars. Will ship oil from the oil sands by rail bypassing the need for a pipeline, and it will keep all their trains busy.

Jun 24 12:21 AM

[Windsun33:]

Any climate change regulations that might affect coal are far in the future. Even if something does come out of congress, it will be so watered down that it will be nothing more than a cover story for Obama's PR and actually do almost nothing. Even if he got everything he wanted, it would take 4-15 years to implement.


On Jun 23 01:55 PM user396040 wrote:

> The only problem I have with this thesis is that the railroads derive
> an enormous amount of their revenue from coal shipments and, if coal
> use is reduced by climate change regulation, they could take a big
> hit.

Jun 24 12:57 AM

[zenman:]

UBS just gave a buy on csx as the cheapest rail on many metrics

Jun 27 12:12 AM