New EU greenhouse gas accounting regulation takes effect today but transport operators have until 2030 to begin mandatory reporting

New European Union regulations on how to account for greenhouse gas emissions from transport services take effect today, but parties affected by the regulation have until 2030 to start reporting their emissions because it will use a new international standard (ISO) still to be adopted.

The EU wants be able to compare transport and logistics emission during the entire lifecycle, including manufacturing, operation and end-of-life of a vehicle, operation of transport and logistics hubs, and construction and maintenance of transport infrastructure. It also wants to allow comparison between, for example, using road or rail.

It has wanted to provide a level playing field for transport organisations to report their emissions since its 2020 strategy ‘Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy – putting European transport on track for the future’. That referred to setting up a European framework that allows reporting of transport and logistics greenhouse gas emissions to be harmonised, based on globally recognised standards. That in turn should give businesses and end-users an estimate of the carbon footprint of their logistics choices, and avoid ‘greenwashing’ when they choose logistics suppliers, the EU says.

The Parliament said a lack of consistent reporting was observed “particularly among micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which represent the vast majority of enterprises offering transport services on the internal market”. It admitted that SMEs “face disproportionately more financial and administrative burdens when they decide to calculate greenhouse gas emissions from their transport services”.

When it announced on 1 June that the regulation ‘on the greenhouse gas emissions accounting of transport services’ had taken effect, the European Parliament said at the moment, “transport users do not obtain accurate information on the performance of transport services, and transport operators, transport service organisers and hub operators do not calculate and disclose their emissions”.

The regulation will be applied to freight or passenger transport services on European Union territory, and those that start or end in a third country (eg UK) and those stopping in the EU to embark or disembark passengers or to load or unload freight

The EU has decided EN ISO 14083:2023 – ‘Greenhouse gases – Quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions arising from transport chain operations’, which was published by the European Committee for Standardization in April 2023, should be the common methodology for calculating greenhouse gas emissions from transport services. It covers emissions ‘on a well-to-wheel basis’, including from energy provision (ie fuel) and vehicle use during hub operations.

The EU now expects an ecosystem of developers to produce calculation tools, accreditation and certification to evolve for using the standard. It wants them to follow a single set of methodological steps that should “adequately account for the needs of the transport market”, but also “ avoid unnecessary complexity, excessive burden and costs, particularly for SMEs”. It will also allow the use of secondary data in some conditions, as it said although primary data “leads to the most reliable and accurate results”, it might be “unattainable or prohibitively expensive for certain stakeholders, especially SMEs”.

Databases will be updated annually and checked by the European Environment Agency.

The next step is to give the European Commission powers to implement these new rules and apply the standard, which should be adopted “No later than 2 June 2030”. The outcome should be, at minimum, that users can compare carbon dioxide emissions per tonne kilometre for freight transport and per tonne for freight hub throughput for suppliers, and compare those numbers with emissions for passenger transport.