Carbon reduction and energy-saving measures today sometimes have a low priority in the strategy of public transport companies. Often these companies are not considered to be a main contributor of carbon emissions compared to private vehicles. As a result, they have often no clear targets fixed in their own corporate strategy or in their management contract with respect to their transport authorities.

Defining a long-term strategy is a key element for CO₂ reduction. It unites staff members around a common objective and shows the company’s commitment to combating climate change.

The goal of this chapter is to describe the path for building a carbon strategy in the public transport field. The methodology is directly inspired from the experiences of the T2K partners. It is worth noting that two preliminary analyses need to be undertaken before entering into the development of a carbon strategy. These were described in the previous chapters:

• Having a clear understanding of the context in terms of current and future climate change commitments at European, National, Regional levels (See Chapter “Facts and Figures”);
• Having a detailed picture of the current emissions of the company by the use of a carbon footprinting method and performance indicators. In order to analyse the evolution of the company’s impacts over the years, a baseline year can be chosen to evaluate the results of the actions (see Chapter “Data Collection and Analysis”).