This fireside chat recap is from FreightWaves’ Domestic Supply Chain Summit on Wednesday.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: The challenge for shippers to track scope 3 emissions and select carriers that pollute less.
DETAILS: Alex Scott, associate professor of supply chain management at the Haslam College of Business, University of Tennessee, joins FreightWaves to talk about the difficulties in measuring carbon emissions in the supply chain and how to get to net-zero emissions.
KEY QUOTES FROM SCOTT:
On gaining carbon visibility: “What we are trying to do is get shippers’ and brokers’ and 3PLs’ insights into the sustainability profile of all these carriers out on the road so they can consider that in their decision-making, along with price, service and safety. … The scope 3 emissions are particularly challenging in the trucking sector because there are so many carriers out there. If you are a shipper and you use a broker that broker may have 10 or 20,000 carriers that they use. So how can that shipper then quantify their emissions of the carriers they are using?”
On regulatory compliance: “You have this coming from a variety of angles. So the EU regulations don’t look exactly as the California regulations. We don’t know what the SEC regulations will look like. You have different standards boards. … So I think there needs to be some standardization. Trucking is a perfect area for standardization. Tons of shippers, tons of carriers. Why should they all do different things? They should do the same thing so we can compare apples to apples.”
On corporate implementation: “Newer trucks are cleaner. So to marginally improve in the short term your emissions as a shipper, you can avoid those really dirty carriers. … You can now look at individual carriers and say, ‘OK, I see the trucks they are operating. They are 20% higher emissions than these other carriers. So, if you can avoid those carriers or incentivize them in some way to update their equipment, then that can reduce your emissions in the 5%, 10%, 15% level.”