The carbon footprint of the supply chain

Time and place:

How the industry uses EU standards to manage its carbon footprint

BRUSSELS, 3 December 2013 – The European Logistics Platform (ELP) brought together EU policymakers and more than fifty industry stakeholders and policy makers for its third event in the European Parliament discussing “The carbon footprint of the supply chain - How the industry uses EU standards to manage its carbon footprint”.

Boguslaw Liberadzki MEP hosted the event. He stressed the need for a European solution: "Application of EU standards for the calculation of the carbon footprint of the supply chain is a precondition to ensure  simple and fair benchmarking between logistics services. We have to avoid divergent national rules and give companies the right incentives to counterbalance the costs to calculate their carbon footprint. As supply chains are mostly global, the EU should also promote global standards.”

Representatives of the supply chain industry presented their initiatives, showcasing how business has proactively taken up the challenge of climate change. Libor Lochmann (CER) presented ‘EcoTransIT’, an industry consortium offering services and tools around the carbon calculation and management. Joanna Barata Correia (IKEA) gave an insight into ‘Green Freight Europe’, an independent and voluntary program to calculate and manage the carbon footprint of road freight transport in Europe. She called for a uniform framework for measuring and comparing CO2 emissions and performances based on the recent standards adopted by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN). Klaus Hufschlag (Deutsche Post DHL) illustrated challenges and opportunities of carbon reporting for a globally active company and its customers and pointed out the need to further develop global standards. Magda Kopczynska, Head of Unit in charge of Maritime transport & logistics in DG MOVE, discussed with the audience the increasing importance of green logistics services and thus the need to have simple standards for carbon calculation leading to better carbon management.

On behalf of the European Logistics Platform, Alexander Kirschall, Chairman of the Steering Committee, emphasized: "Efforts of industry are well developed. Now it is decisive to build on these initiatives and not to confront industry with diverging regimes on national levels.” The event showed the strong commitment of the supply chain industry to engage in effective climate protection. The recent CEN standards are understood as a valuable basis. The discussion called upon policy to support the industry commitment with consistent application across the EU, easy to implement, bringing value to customers and aligned with international rules.