CO2 emissions and incoterms effect for transport

General
1

Hi,
has anyone some experience on how incoterms can impact the CO2 emissions?
As an example :
my customer buys a same product A (no supplier data available - only industry average data available) and buys it sometimes direct from the original location and sometimes through a third party. More specific :

For product A, an industry-average emission factor is available - there is no supplier-specific data -so transport is included in the emission factor.
Original product A comes from South America.

1/Company buys product A in FOB itself in South America → means they pay and arrange transport → so transport CO2 must be counted for sea freight to gate
2/Same company also buys product A to CIF to Rotterdam → this means they only charge transport from rotterdam to gate (rest is in the price - and factored into the CO2 emission factor)
3/Same company buys product A from another European party → again they only charge for transport from EU to gate

Surely, for the CO2 emissions of the company in question, it is difficult to explain why for the same product, ultimately coming from the same original location, they have different CO2 emissions in situation 1 vs 2 and 3.

Any idea’s or thoughts on this please?

thank you

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2

Hi Vanessa,

Thanks for this question, interesting topic.

  • How are you sure about the link of the fact that the emission factor is industry-average to the inclusion of transport?
  • I think it is more of a choice where to account for it, instead of a difference in total emissions (scenario 3 might differ if it has an addtional stop somewhere in EU). Below an overview of the distribution assuming that the client
  1. Tier 1 transport in scope 3.4 (South America to gate) and the full upstream emissions of product A (life-cycle) in scope 3.1 (excl. the transport from South America to gate)
  2. Tier 1 transport in scope 3.4 (Rotterdam to gate) and the full upstream emissions of product A (life-cycle) in scope 3.1 (incl. the transport from South America to Rotterdam and excl. the transport from Rotterdam to gate)
  3. Tier 1 transport in scope 3.4 (EU to gate) and the full upstream emissions of product A (life-cycle) in scope 3.1 (incl. the transport from South America to Rotterdam to EU and excl. the transport from EU to gate)
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