What Scope 3 Reporting Actually Asks of Shippers

Category 4 of the GHG Protocol — upstream transportation and distribution — is where most shippers’ Scope 3 numbers are weakest, and increasingly where assurance providers look first.

Spend-based figures are running out of road

The easiest way to produce a freight emissions number is to multiply what you spent by an industry emission factor. It is defensible as a first estimate and almost useless as a management tool, because it moves when your rates move rather than when your emissions move. Negotiate a better rate and your reported emissions fall, which is obviously wrong.

Assurance providers have begun flagging exactly this. If your emissions track your freight spend line for line, expect a question.

Activity-based is the standard worth hitting

The GLEC Framework — now folded into ISO 14083 — asks for emissions calculated from actual activity: tonne-kilometres by mode, with mode-specific and where possible carrier-specific factors. That gives you a number that falls when you shift a lane from air to rail, and does not move when you renegotiate a rate.

It requires three data points per shipment you probably already have: chargeable weight, distance and mode. The gap is usually that they live in three systems.

What to fix first

• Get mode onto every shipment record. Surprisingly often it is inferred rather than stored.
• Use real distances, not straight lines. Great-circle distance understates road and rail by a wide margin.
• Ask carriers for their factors. The good ones publish them; the difference between a carrier average and an industry average is frequently 20% or more.

The reporting benefit is secondary

The reason to do this is not the disclosure. It is that an activity-based number is the only one that tells you whether a modal shift, a consolidation programme or a network redesign actually worked. A spend-based number cannot answer that question, which is why it never changes anyone’s decision.