Authorities are looking to leap-frog legislators and come up with their own transport industry carbon emissions measurement.

A new International Workshop Agreement (IWA) from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) will allow the sector to drive progress, rather than rely on national bodies.

Standards Australia is a member of the ISO, and will be considering the latest initiative; IWA 16:2015.

IWA 16:2015 aims to create a standard measurement of the amount and intensity of CO2-equivalent emissions is three key areas:

  • operation of transport chain element (TCE)
  • ‘network’ (up to the company level)
  • cargo

“In order to identify best practice and to improve the efficiency of transport chains, an accepted and standardised method for calculating emissions values is needed together with a specification of data requirements,” the proposal states.

This would allow for analysis of the different perspectives of carriers, logistics service providers and shippers.

“As analysis has shown, optimisation of emissions for shipments and for networks of individual transport providers requires different approaches,” the IWA document states.

“All other things being equal, for isolated cargo direct routings are usually those with the lowest emissions.

“For transport service providers avoiding empty transportation space will often lead to optimisation.

“Furthermore the characteristics of the various transportation modes need to be taken into consideration as well as those of handling processes, logistics hubs and transhipment centres.”

The IWA will add value through “the thorough scientific comparison it makes of currently existing standards against the industry and stakeholder perspective, thus building a valid and practical foundation for the development of a global standard for emissions calculation in freight transport chains”, according to Dr Verena Ehrler and Alan Lewis, leaders of the group behind IWA 16 in Europe.