A new tender asks for emissions per shipment
A retailer you want to win asks, in its tender, for greenhouse gas emissions per shipment for the last year, and for monthly reporting going forward. An existing customer has started asking the same question for their own reporting. Your team looks at a sample shipment: sea leg from Yantian, transhipment in Singapore, rail or truck from Southampton to a Midlands warehouse. Each leg needs a distance, a mode, a weight and an emissions factor.
Doing that by hand for one shipment takes a while. Doing it for thousands is not realistic in a spreadsheet.
Why the data is hard to assemble
Your jobs hold much of what is needed, but not in a form a calculation can use. Legs, distances and the details of how cargo moved are spread across systems and partners.
- Jobs hold origin and destination, but not always every leg and transhipment.
- Distances by sea, air and road differ from straight-line figures and need a consistent method.
- Weights are in several places, and LCL or consolidated cargo needs allocating.
- Haulage legs are booked with hauliers, and their details sit in separate records.
- Methods and factors must be chosen and documented, and customers may ask which you used.
What it costs
Tenders are lost or weakened when you cannot answer the question. Existing customers who need the data for their own reporting may move to a forwarder who can provide it. And answering one-off requests by hand takes skilled time that is hard to spare. We do not advise on emissions reporting standards; your adviser and your customers' requirements guide that.
The emissions calculation we build
- For each shipment, legs are assembled from job data, carrier routing and tracking events, and haulage bookings: mode, origin and destination of each leg, and vessel or flight where known.
- Distances are calculated per leg using a consistent method for each mode.
- Weights are taken from the job, with consolidated cargo allocated by the rule you choose.
- The calculation method and emissions factors you select with your adviser are applied, and where carriers supply their own figures, those can be used instead for their legs.
- Every assumption is recorded with the result, so a customer can see how a figure was reached.
- Reports per shipment, per customer and per period are produced, and can be added to invoices or customer reports.
| Input | Where it comes from | How it is used |
|---|---|---|
| Legs and modes | Jobs, routing and tracking | Assembled per shipment |
| Distances | Calculated per leg | Consistent method per mode |
| Weights | Job data | Allocated for consolidated cargo |
| Factors | Chosen with your adviser | Applied and recorded |
After
Emissions questions in tenders and from customers can be answered from data, per shipment, with the method documented. The work is done once, as part of each job, rather than as a special exercise. And you can see which lanes and modes carry the most emissions for your customers, which can support conversations about routing options where they want them.
Checklist
- Customers or tenders ask for emissions per shipment.
- You cannot answer without a manual exercise.
- Job data does not record every leg.
- No documented method or factors are in use.
- Consolidated cargo makes allocation difficult.