Calculating emissions along supply chains — Towards the global methodological harmonisation

In order to keep climate change on a manageable level, countries across the globe are expected to control and reduce their total greenhouse gas emissions. A major contributor to these emissions is the growing transport sector, especially professional freight transport. Several initiatives and organisations have come forward with possible methods, tools or databases for the calculation of the carbon footprint of freight transport chains. However, calculations often render results which are not comparable, sufficiently transparent or accurate since these initiatives are based on different starting points, approaches or intentions in development. Based on these existing methods and tools and with special regard to the recently published EN 16258 standard, this research provides an overview of prioritised gaps and ambiguities in current approaches together with first suggestions on how to address them in the pursuit of methodological harmonisation when calculating logistics related carbon footprint emissions along complex supply chains. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how existing standardisation approaches for the calculation of emissions of supply chains can be further developed in a next step towards a global methodological harmonisation.