Driving Logistics Decarbonisation With Collaboration

Logistics and Supply Chain News

‘‘Tackling emissions and greenhouse gasses from logistics is urgent,’ began Moritz Tolke, Technical Manager at Smart Freight Centre, during the closing keynote session at ‘Delivering Green: Creating Sustainable Supply Chains’ Conference, organised by The Logistics Point on the 11th May.

Currently around 8% of all emissions worldwide come from supply chain activities but that is expected to double by 2050. To reach the industry’s sustainability goals, companies would need to focus on the way they report their emissions and also expand their collaboration efforts in order to bring more stakeholders on board with them. Before setting up a target, it is also crucial to have a real-time visibility over logistics and supply chain operations.

Identifying hotspots

Organisations need to be firstly fully transparent internally and look at what is happening within their supply chains. By identifying hotspots they could also map out potential areas where reductions in emissions can be done quickly. ‘Internal transparency comes to life only if we start calculating emissions across the supply chain,’ Tolke underlined.

Following on that, logistics and supply chain firms would be also good to explore how to track changes and developments. Tolke showcased the work of Smart Freight Centre, an NGO focused on reducing emissions in the logistics sector, and its GLEC Framework, which currently is the only globally recognised way of measuring emissions across the supply chain.

The framework helps organisations to consistently calculate their emissions and also benchmark them so they are more relevant and useful.

‘There is a rising need for more transparency around emission calculation,’ Tolke went on. The positive news is that more and more detailed measuring is happening and companies are looking into granular parts of their networks in order to optimise and reach their sustainability goals. The key thing is data exchange between different players in the supply chain. SFC advises all companies to start from where the data that can be easily reached and on that to build a more detailed picture.

Collaboration

Once data is available another key factor is how organisations along the supply chain work together. Tolke spoke about five different ways to reach decarbonisation but stressed that all of them require deep collaboration between stakeholders.

In addition, decarbonisation could also be funded from within by proactively upgrading equipment and choosing better ways of doing logistics operations. According to SFC the money dedicated to emission reduction can be used in a way that drives a change in the whole value chain.

You can watch the full presentation now: