The Transporeon Visibility Mastery: Green Edition event brought together top speakers from companies like Deloitte, Transport Intelligence, Bekaert, Sovereign, Sixfold and SupplyStack. We showed how it was possible for all logistics actors to measure & reduce emissions with real-time visibility in order to create sustainable supply chains.
The transport sector accounts for a quarter of all global carbon emissions, with a full 13% coming directly from shipping, road and aviation. It’s a burning industry issue that doesn’t seem likely to resolve itself as we face a growing (and increasingly urbanised) population who are set to drive a doubling in eCommerce related freight alone in the next 5 years.
At the same time, governments around the world have committed to drastic emissions reductions by up to 60%, while investors, end-customers and employees are also making stronger demands for logistics companies to reduce their environmental impact.
If that pressure wasn’t enough, it’s worth pointing out that many logistics companies are family-owned and operated. With the previous generation having weathered the storms of oil shocks and inflation, it’s even more important that we find a way to not just preserve our industry for the next generation but to make sure we make a positive and proactive impact on the decarbonisation process.
Logistics, and transport in particular, have very specific challenges that make this transformation difficult. To start with it’s a highly energy intensive industry with long asset lifespans and electrification issues. This means that change is less likely to originate from infrastructural shifts but rather operational and technological innovations. Given that companies are still facing issues regarding end-to-end visibility, underutilised assets and severe fragmentation, it would appear though that the digital transformation process is still yet to fully change how sustainability is addressed.
Real-Time Visibility and Sustainability in Europe’s Logistics Sector
Our research with Transport Intelligence
and 234 shippers points to two reasons for the lack of pace in adopting methods to promote sustainability:
A lack of visibility: Real-time data is seen as the most valuable information available to stakeholders in the supply chain when it comes to implementing and improving sustainable operations. While many companies are implementing
real-time visibility tools, the active application of it in reducing emissions is limited. Problems like asset under-utilisation can be directly addressed with real-time visibility enabled-strategies which in turn can significantly reduce the amount of emissions generated. Although 72% of companies in our research have clear carbon reduction goals, there is a lack of available information to fix the low hanging fruits from improving daily operational processes.
A lack of transparency: Companies are currently employing a wide range of systems to monitor and measure their carbon emissions. While this indicates a healthy demand for services to help achieve sustainability goals, the reality is that this highly fragmented landscape makes it harder to fully see a holistic view of a supply chain. This is because measuring scope 3 emissions requires cooperation with supply partners and a unified standard of reporting, which the fragmented data landscape prevents. Additionally, this data needs to comply with existing emission reporting frameworks which is made which takes companies up to six weeks to do.
Measuring emissions with Carbon Visibility
Transporeon is not just CO2 neutral. We have also made a commitment to helping the entire transport industry to reduce their emissions as well. In talking with over 150 LSPs, shippers, retailers and carriers we have learnt that we can unlock sustainability improvements by giving everyone greater visibility over their scope 3 emissions. Our Carbon Visibility Dashboard makes emission reporting easy and accessible by providing a comprehensive tool to everyone, independent of whether they are a customer of Transporeon or not. This effectively solves the two key problems of visibility and transparency.By using real-time visibility tools we can accurately and effectively measure carbon emissions across all transport modes, to the highest market standard of the GLEC framework. This combines real-time visibility data, such as the route taken, with primary data, like fuel consumption. The end result is a highly accurate view of total emissions across the transport lifecycle. This data can be benchmarked against historical or industry norms, which in turn can be used to create green tendering or assignment processes to reduce this footprint.
Crucially, this data is also made transparent. Scope 3 emissions for shippers are hard to calculate, but readily available to carriers. Likewise, scope 3 emissions for carriers are effectively scope 1 emissions for shippers. By connecting these two parties in a centralised platform, it provides all stakeholders with the exact data in the right place to ensure their reporting and abatement strategies can be accessed and delivered with just a few clicks.
Visibility Mastery 2022
To make a significant and proactive contribution to the fight against climate change, it’s essential that all parts of the supply chain can communicate, access and share the highest quality data. Real-time visibility has an important role to play in making sustainability an achievable business goal.