Having successfully launched the global version of the “EcoTransIT” online
calculator at the International Transport Forum in Leipzig last May, UIC and the seven EcoTransIT consortium members welcomed more than 100 participants from 50 logistics companies, shippers, scientific and non-governmental organisations to the 1st EcoTransIT Stakeholder Workshop on the 5 October at UIC, Paris.

The EcoTransIT Consortium strongly supports cooperation and partnerships, both between the different modes of transport and with international organisations and institutions – who were all represented at the workshop. The overall objective of the workshop was thus to encourage the alliance of forces and the creation of synergies to develop a sector standard methodology for calculating emissions from logistics and freight transport.

The workshop provided a platform to facilitate dialogue between the whole freight and logistics sector on how best to support ‘greening’ logistics. It also provided an introduction to the data and methodology behind the online calculator supporting green accounting and green logistics activities.

Parallel sessions invited participants to explore and share their needs and requirements, expectations, and concerns in order to develop a commonly accepted method for carbon footprinting. These sessions were dedicated to marine transport, air transport, shippers’ needs and logistics chain. This provided highly useful recommendations for the further developments of EcoTransIT.

EcoTransIT is recognised as a highly credible and scientific tool for freight and logistics transportation in general and is now ready for adaptation to fulfil the needs on company level (i.e. meeting the needs of a freight and logistics provider with specific company level data). Furthermore, EcoTransIT can meet crucial needs such as reliable communication, requirement for green accounting, and reduction of the customer’s carbon footprint – while keeping EcoTransIT simple and sophisticated.

Speakers from United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), European Environment Agency (EEA) and the EU project SuperGREEN emphasised various aspects of the importance of measuring carbon footprinting and suggested cooperation between EcoTransIT and several carbon reduction initiatives.
“More and more companies – led by global players – are taking their carbon emissions seriously and recognise the need to minimise them”, stated Ulrich Ostermayer, President of the EcoTransIT Consortium. “They believe that freight supply chains offer considerable scope for improving both environmental and economic performance.” Furthermore, the European Committee for Standardization is currently developing environmental reporting standards for freight transportation. These standards, which will come into force in spring 2012, are raising awareness of the topic and encouraging companies to define their corporate strategic positions.

Example: transporting a container from Beijing to Paris, Port of Gennevilliers
Any user can take advantage of the online application EcoTransIT World to calculate and compare transport chains. To give an example, the transport of a standard container (TEU = twenty-foot equivalent unit) from Beijing to Paris produces the following results:

• Air transport is the fastest mode, but with very high carbon emissions: a total of 84.7 tonnes CO2-equivalents including collection and delivery by truck at each end.
• A ship takes longer but has a much lower impact on the environment with 2.6 to 3.7 tonnes CO2-equivalents (depending on speed).
• A train has the lowest emissions with 2.9 tonnes CO2-equivalents, including intermodal transfer, even with the same volumes of CO2 as transport by air and ship for the collection and delivery by truck at each end.