Primary Data Exports for Sea freight emissions: use of chargeable weight instead of actual weight

General
1

Hi all,

while reviewing transport emissions for a client, we found significant differences in carrier-provided (primary) data for sea freight. Some transport companies calculate emissions based on chargeable weight, others on actual weight - resulting in values differing by a factor of around 4 to 5 for comparable shipments. We found the use of chargeable weights in the data of two major freight carriers. There were like 15 different carriers..

All carriers state in their exports, that they used EcoTransIT for the calculation. Without question, a trustworthy source. My assumption is that “chargeable weight” is being used as an allocation proxy, which should be ok but:

  • The calculations are inconsistent within the same carriers: US divisions use actual weights, while European divisions use chargeable weights.
  • The exports don’t state in detail which weight basis (chargable weight or actucal weight) was used. We only discovered the use of chargable weight by comparing emission outputs to the shipment data.
    • The first indicator was a simple comparison of emissions ing kg CO2e per € of transport costs. Most transporters were between €0.10 and €0.16 per kg CO2e. The outliers were between €0.52 and €0.54 per kg CO2e. This made us suspicious, so we decided to take a closer look at the exports of the outliers….

For air and road transport, the GLEC Framework explicitly states that chargeable weight should not be used. For sea freight, I couldn’t find an equally clear passage (or I may have missed it?!).

Questions:

  1. Have you experienced this case before?

  2. If so, how you dealed with this?

    1. I already requested a statement regarding the metholody used 2 weeks ago..
    2. Also i requested a calculation based on actual weights just in case chargeable weights should not be used.

Thanks!