Towards a global CO2 calculation standard for supply chains: Suggestions for methodological improvements

Abstract

Improving the efficiency and sustainability of supply chains is a shared aim of the transport industry, its customers, governments as well as industry organisations. To optimize supply chains and for the identification of best practice, standards for their analysis are needed in order to achieve comparable evaluations. This need for an evaluation standard also applies to CO2 emission calculations. This research focuses on the transportation within supply chains and possible approaches towards a global standard for calculating its CO2 emissions. In the recent past, several organisations, national and international, have come forward with possible methods, tools and databases for the calculation of CO2 emissions along supply chains, but almost all of them do not cover the entire transportation chain. Also standards for CO2 emissions of products and production in general do exist but they do not take the particular requirements of transportation into consideration. Therefore a global standard specifically for transportation could not yet be introduced. The EN 16258 standard is the only international standard for emission calculation of transportation in supply chains. It was therefore analyzed as a possible starting point for a global standardization approach. Analysis shows it too contains gaps and ambiguities which render comparisons of supply chains difficult. These gaps of the EN 16258 are analyzed, followed by suggestions for methodological improvements for their closure. The research concludes with an outlook on next steps needed towards a global CO2 calculation standard for transportation within supply chains.