Smart Freight Centre was founded during the last year of the COFRET
project and has been instrumental in the past decade
to develop and promote
the GLEC Framework in the logistics sector, to develop it into an ISO
standard, as well as to be adopted in the CountEmissionsEU proposal on
transport emissions calculation and reporting. There were a couple of
opportunities that came together to allow SFC to create impact based off
COFRET’s project results.
However, this was only possible
since COFRET was successful in creating results
with high impact.
Some of the main reasons
that COFRET was successful were:
- The topic addressed a relevant industry question at the time. Besides the growing environmental interest, companies were also
interested in accurately calculating fuel consumption along the transport chain
for financial reasons.
Fuel prices were high, and the industry
was still reeling
from the financial crisis of
2007-2009.
- A visionary and invested project
officer from the EC. The assigned
project officer was from DG MOVE
and was thus interested and knowledgeable about
the transport sector
rather than having
a focus on research. This steered the project outcomes
towards what was practical rather
than what was purely
academic. He only finalized the consortium grant agreement, if a strong
industry advisory group was part of
the project. Hence, from the beginning the project had an industry-orientation,
which made the final project results high-impact for the industry.
- Strong and engaged
industry advisory board. The project benefitted from a strong
and active advisory board consisting of members of
leading industry actors, such as IKEA, Scania, DB Schenker, UPS, etc. Their
involvement and commitment throughout the project were crucial in guiding the
project's direction, making decisions, and ensuring alignment with industry
needs, i.e., to develop something that can be really used by the group it was
created for. The board remained open
to new members, which signaled that other industry actors were always invited
to contribute to the project.
- Permission to change grant agreement and project direction midway. The industry advisory board wanted a shift from developing a new
methodology and tool towards a harmonization of existing methods through a
common framework. The project officer supported these changes to be made in the grant agreement midway
during the project,
which included changes
with respect to timeline and budget.
- Collaboration with DG MOVE. The
collaboration and support from two individuals in DG MOVE, , contributed
significantly to the project's success, and paved the way for the follow-up EU
project, LEARN. Their involvement and backing demonstrated a strong commitment
from the EU side, fostering a positive environment for the project's
development and for post-project uptake.
- Industry-led ambition to standardize
emissions accounting. While what the industry
wanted was an ISO norm, this could not be
accomplished directly within the COFRET project due to lack of time and
resources. Hence, the decision was made to produce an International Workshop
Agreement, which is a “a workshop mechanism outside of ISO
committee structures, following a procedure that ensures the broadest
range of relevant
interested parties worldwide
have the opportunity to participate, and are approved by consensus amongst the
individual participants in the workshops.” (https://www.iso.org/deliverables-all.html#IWA, Accessed
31.07.2023) The IWA served in this case as a precursor to a full-fledged ISO norm. The result, codified in an
industry-approved medium, such as the IWA, sent a strong signal for relevance
compared to the other, often
academic, publications that were created in the project.
- Consortium and project coordinator that rose to the occasion. The COFRET project would not have been feasible without a strong and
dynamic project coordinator, as well as the consortium partners that were
willing and agile to adapt to the changing needs of the project.
In short, the individuals in the project
took the initiative, in many cases, outside of the ‘normal’
expected effort to create
lasting value from the project.
From the researchers to the project
officer; the industry
to the public authorities; there was a concerted
effort to produce
what would be impactful to the industry,
as expressed by the industry members themselves. Many of the same individuals would take
this onwards through the GLEC, Smart Freight Centre, the LEARN project and to
the ISO 14083 standard.
It could be considered that the rest of the journey from COFRET to ISO 14083 was due to its post-exploitation
activities. As COFRET
created the framework, the idea was to apply them in as many countries as possible. This led
to Smart Freight Centre
(SFC) that was still in its infancy
that aimed at playing a role somewhat
as a global green freight program, in alignment with and integrating
with regional (e.g., Green Freight Asia) or national (e.g., Smartways) green
freight programs.
COFRET contacted the founder of SFC and together with the industry
advisory board, as well as DG MOVE, made
a plan to transition COFRET’s framework and the industry advisory board to be
hosted by SFC. The industry advisory board became the Global Logistics
Emission Council (GLEC) advisory board. The COFRET framework was reworked to
become more practical in the form of the GLEC Framework publication, which
provided reader-friendly (as opposed to expert-oriented) guidance into how
emissions calculation should be applied.
Other milestones:
- The follow-up project LEARN,
coordinated by SFC, exposed the GLEC Framework more intensively to the industry
via the respective green freight programs
and case studies.
Close collaboration with other
associations in the space, such as ALICE, played a crucial role in ensuring
that the dissemination and communication activities were impactful.
- The start of the ISO working group hosted by the
German norms association, DIN, led by the COFRET project coordinator also began. SFC led the work on logistics emissions calculation as project
manager. The ISO 14083 was published April 2023.
-
The CountEmissions EU proposal,
published July 2023, will use the ISO 14083 as the calculation methodology. SFC
continues to work closely with DG MOVE to support their initiative.
Standardizing the fuel emission factor and intensity databases, the assurance
scheme and the verification of tools, are key features that will ensure the
proposal makes impactful change in the emissions reporting in the EU.
Once the CountEmissions EU proposal and the associated directives
are in place, more work will need to be done to align actual implementation in
the transport sector. Standardization is after all not about standardization of
techniques, but standardization of the implementation of techniques. And more
importantly, it is about applying the techniques to drive real-world lasting
change for the sake of addressing humanity’s greatest collective challenge,
anthropogenic climate change.
