The environmentally-friendly way to travel to France

If you’re looking for a more sustainable way to travel to France, LeShuttle is the answer. We are the environmentally-friendly way to travel to France by car, and this page will show you all the ways we achieve this.

Reduce your carbon footprint by travelling with us

Your carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases you generate (including carbon dioxide and methane). We’re all trying to keep ours as low as possible of course, making more sustainable choices like keeping a check on energy use in our homes and how many miles we travel using various forms of transport.

Transport is one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases and other harmful pollutants but travelling to France with LeShuttle is the best option for reducing your carbon footprint.

The Channel Tunnel and its rail transport system have some intrinsic environmental advantages which help us achieve this:

A fully underground link that does not emit sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides gases which are particularly harmful for public health and are specific to maritime transportation
Electric locomotives that generate a low level of atmospheric pollution and only marginal greenhouse gas emissions

73x less CO2e

In terms of your carbon footprint, travelling with LeShuttle is better than going by ferry as it emits 73x less carbon dioxide. CO2 contributes to your carbon footprint, so this is an important factor to reducing its size.

To give you a clear example, if you were to travel by car on the ferry, it would produce 147kg CO2e. If you drive your car onto one of our shuttles and travel to France, it’s only 2kg CO2e, a big difference.

Support for electric vehicles (EVs)

Travelling by EV is even kinder on the environment, so we want to support our customers doing so as much as we can. We have EV chargers on site for customer use. Our chargers support Tesla as well as most other models (check electric vehicle charging availability).

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A car boarding a Eurotunnel shuttle

Calculate your carbon saving

Compare CO2 emissions

Analysis of CO2 emissions on comparable passenger journeys using independent analysis performed by Carbone 4* on 2019 CO2 emissions

Paris to London carbon emission comparison

Brussels to London carbon emission comparison

Amsterdam to London carbon emission comparison

Less carbon with LeShuttle Freight

Just like a car carrying passengers, our shuttles also help other modes of transport carry freight across the channel. However, we are constantly striving to improve our environmental performance and produce less carbon and other harmful emissions.

12 times less carbon emissions for a truck in the tunnel

A truck using LeShuttle will emit 12x less CO2e than if it completed its journey on a ferry. Using a 1090 km journey as an example this represents a 10% drop in CO2e emissions.

Freight customers can easily calculate the savings madeo on a journey when travelling with LeShuttle compared with a ferry using the online carbon counter.

As well as a truck crossing the Channel with LeShuttle emitting 12 times less CO2 than with the ferries, a 25 km journey from Folkestone to Dover saves a further 20 kg of carbon emissions each way.

A Eurotunnel freight shuttle

Samphire Hoe nature reserve

Samphire Hoe

LeShuttle has, for the 15th time, been awarded the highly prestigious Green Flag Award® for the 30-hectare Samphire Hoe nature reserve at the foot of the beautiful White Cliffs of Dover. Visit the Samphire Hoe website to find out more.

Low carbon in the UK

A view of Eurotunnel Le Shuttle Terminal from the air

Since 2018 every electric KWh used by Getlink in the UK is contractually provided only by nuclear power plants, the production of electricity to power our electrical trains emit no additional carbon in the air!¹

250,000 fewer trucks on the road

A Eurotunnel freight shuttle

An impressive 1.5 million tonnes CO2e are avoided each year because we actively reduce the number of our trucks out on the road using our subsidiary Europorte rail freight. That’s the equivalent of around 150,000 people’s annual CO2e emissions.

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References

The following refers to data on this page:

* Carbone 4 data is based on

• 2019 data

• Expert simulation for ferry emissions in the Short Strait

• Most recognized methodologies: GHG Protocol, GLEC Framework

• Car emissions are calculated with a filling of 2 passengers per car

• Emission factors from the Carbon Base ® ADEME and UK Conversion factors from the DBEIS Ministry

• Emissions include emissions related to Fuel, Electricity (Scopes 1+2) and energy related Upstream emissions (Scope 3a)

• Emission factor for electricity is on a location-based methodology (sector: transport)

¹On a full Life Cycle Assessment (including the construction and waste management phases), a kWh produced at a nuclear power plant emits arounf 6 gCO2e which is which hydraulic power the less emitting power source.