How to get to ghg emissions reporting within 6 months?

[serge.schamschula@transporeon.com]

During the ECTA Responsible Care meeting Brussels end of September a representative of a LSP asked “but how can I get there within this short time [6 months as requested by SQAS]?” Well, it´s both easy and difficult, dependent from the pathway chosen. Let´s forget alternatives without validity, then two directions come into the picture:

“Self made (wo)man”: You download the GLEC-framework, capture all data sitting in your own trucks telematics (for some you may need to pay extra) in particular primary data (fuel consumption and fuel type), hire a data scientist and a coder. You can sort your own fleet´s emissions doing so. What remains are the emissions from subcontractors, ferries, trains and other providers. If they all would have a GLEC accredited tool you could go back and ask them for their data, just a bit time-consuming again. Otherwise you can go out and see to buy granular industry default data on your own in order to be able to estimate their emissions. I you manage to do so, you will still need to get a paper which confirms your compliance with the GLEC (go to the Smart Feight Centre, the TÜV or the DEKRA, for example). The latter takes about 2-3 months. It´s not very likely all this being achievable within such a short period of time.

You can save much time, effort and money if you go for a provider which is accredited for compliance with the GLEC framework. Which is able to cover your subcontractors, your ferries and all modalities which may appear in your network. In particular since most of these tools are decently priced. If so your own effort comes down to collect data on your transports which you already have in your operations system and make it exportable to the tool of choice.

On short terms most of these tools will do it, still it makes sense to chose the right tool from a mid- to long-term perspective. So what are the differences and what makes sense for you?

Granularity
There are tools which provide top-down calculation, which is quite in-transparent and uses the average of the averages. Today this is still accepted for reporting, but for how long? Hence I would prefer bottom-up calculation.

Default data source
Some tools purchase science-based high-quality data in collaboration with Clean Cargo or Frauenhofer institute, which of course is preferable.

Primary data
Few tools manage to work with primary data. This is real data “from the very source” which provides the actual emissions without “guesstimation”. Primary data is either “embedded” coming directly from the telematics of the vehicle (if shared) and / or “enriched” coming from 3rd-party sources. For today´s reporting purpose primary data isn´t compulsory, but may be needed in future. Also it needs to be said that using defaults only the difference to the actual ghg emissions can be substential (up to 55% even within the GLEC framework).
As a result from using primary data the differences among providers, trucks and drivers suddenly become visible.

Secondary data
Secondary data is also real data coming from telematics such as primary. Driver behavior or engine characteristics are examples for secondary data. This is very useful for carriers and even LSPs, in order to improve energy consumptions and CO2e in parallel. For a shipper they add little value but raise gdpr issues if done on truck / driver level.

Modality
Mind that some calculation tools focus on one or few transportation modes only. Considering the endeavor to integrate it and prepare proper uploads this doesn´t seem to be appropriate, except you and your subcontractors don´t use any other modes.

ISO 14083
Your provider should be prepared to move to the new standard ISO 14083 which is going to be released early 2023. The ISO 14083 will replace the GLEC over time.

Calculation only or data lake
Most tools available do provide a calculation in an excel sheet or csv file. Few by an API. All this makes it difficult to track and compare except you do have a BI center in place which can perform this task. If you don´t a tool which stores your data over time and incorporates appropriate dashboards may be preferable.

Expressive dashboards
Useful dashboards allow you to drill down to a corridor (from-region-to-region), the very transport if needed, and display the results by business units, customers or carriers on your end.

Embedded customer GLEC reports
Your dashboard / tool should able able to generate customer-specific GLEC reports which you can simply forward.

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