Updated guidance available to support the chemical sector further reduce its environmental impact of freight transportation

Updated guidance available to support the chemical sector further reduce its environmental impact of freight transportation 

The updated guidance “Calculating GHG transport and logistics emissions for the European Chemical Industry” is a collaboration between Cefic and Smart Freight Centre (SFC), creating a new Module for the Global Logistics Emissions Council (GLEC) Framework. The guidance aims to help the sector gain deeper insights into the GHG emissions from the transportation of goods for both inbound to production plants and outbound to customers.  

These guidelines reflect changes over the last decade, including state-of-the art calculation output methods, since Cefic and the European Chemicals Transport Association (ECTA) launched their first guide in 2011. The guidelines support industry to respond to increasing pressure from investors, legislation, and customers to reduce emissions from freight transport activities.  

“With transport being classed as a difficult challenge when it comes to reducing GHG emissions, it is important that companies come together to take action. The fact that this guidance is produced by Cefic and backed by ECTA demonstrates a willingness to reduce transport emissions that can only be achieved by the European chemical industry if these two groups work in cooperation.” Alan Lewis, Technical Director, Smart Freight Centre.   

“Measuring is managing!” says Joost Naessens, Director Transport & Logistics at Cefic, “This guidance supports the chemical industry to evaluate and manage the emission impact of its transport choices, taking into account the characteristics of the chemical sector. It will be the basis to start discussions and collaboration with our logistics service providers. Ultimately, we expect harmonised and energy-based emission measuring and reporting from all logistics service providers.”  

Cefic has also issued a new version of SQAS questionnaires (www.sqas.org), to better assess logistics service provider emission management performance from January 2022.