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Better measure to better reduce carbon footprint
Business leaders have long known that what gets measured, gets done - and you can’t improve what you don’t measure.
In the case of carbon emissions, many large organizations are required to report on their annual output, with the subsequent expectation that they will work to reduce it. However, they are unable to evidence any improvements without baseline data to show where they began, as well as to highlight CO2 hotspots for their attention.
Emissions come from many areas, not least of which is the transportation of goods. This represents a third of greenhouse gas emissions and is the second largest contributor after the energy sector.
Speaking at a presentation entitled "Green logistics: Better measurement for better reduction" at IT expo VivaTech in Paris this summer, Eric Leger, Head of Supply Chain at KPMG France, said to have a global vision for tackling the issue two things were required: dedicated individuals and data.
Wakeo is a software-as-a-service platform aimed at managing multimodal transport flows across road, rail, sea and airfreight. By linking directly to transport providers it collects millions of data points, supplemented by information from other sources and AI, to track containers. This enables us to provide a geolocation and anticipate travel paths and arrival times.
This real-time visibility provides vital information with which companies can make proactive decisions while products are in transit, as well as strategic decisions based on intelligent analytics, and integrate carbon footprint data and criteria into the choices they make. It tracks where shipments stop, the weight of the goods they carry, the type of vessel, train, plane or truck they’re on and so forth, to produce a carbon calculation per shipment. Companies working to reduce their impact can measure it in detail and use this information to consider where they can make changes to minimize their footprint.
Speaking at VivaTech, Julien Cote said it is a two-step implementation process.
“First we fill the digital gap by implementing Wakeo’s real-time solution and then, we fill the environmental gap by adding a second layer with the carbon footprint calculation that is compliant with European Commission standards.”
A major industrial gasses company has been tracking and using the predictive arrival time data over the past five years. More recently it implemented Wakeo’s carbon footprint module to proactively integrate environmental criteria into its daily decisions. It is also able to communicate to its clients about the carbon footprint impact of their containers.
It is much simpler and swifter for companies to make positive changes with accurate, up-to-date data at their fingertips. A real-time carbon footprint calculation enables organizations to measure their impact and make impactful and informed decisions.
Wakeo wants to go beyond measuring emissions to empower global companies to be able to reach their ambitious targets with a proactive strategy. "We already have a large amount of data on global lanes and are using this to build a benchmark on environmental efficiency by leveraging data from global customers and anonymising it."
"The CO2 score engine we are developing will help organizations to reduce their impact with greener decisions. As a next step, we will be able to make recommendations to help organizations to select greener routes and modes from rail, waterway, sea instead of air and road. Visibility will also enable customers to optimize the pooling and loading rates of containers."
Organizations can achieve a competitive advantage by better managing their environmental impact while reducing costs, using best-in-class technology that provides greater visibility of their supply chains.