Decarbonizing a supply chain begins and ends with measuring its carbon footprint, but it may also be the start of a rough trip if you don't know the best route forward. Welcome to the jungle.
What jungle? Looking at a 10,000-foot view of Greenhouse Gas, or GHG, emissions in the supply chain look tame. There are three categories of emissions, seven gases, and a couple of dozen areas to measure - no more complicated than a stroll in a park.
source ref: GreenHouse Gas Protocol
The landscape looks nothing like a park at ground level - you see a jungle crawling with unknown risks. It’s an uncharted territory without a map, and every company is proceeding at its own risk. Lots of confusion and many get lost in the process. Jungle!
Whether you see a lush park or wild jungle here, there’s a 70% chance your sustainability journey will fail if you do not know the best route to take before starting.
The path forward begins and ends with measuring and reporting on emissions. This post will find the best route for decarbonizing the supply chain.
Find the Best Route First
Before finding something, you have to know what to look for, but it can be hard to spot things hidden in a jungle. The best route leads to the best possible outcomes for a sustainable business process, and focusing on them will help reveal that route:
- Minimize GHG and environmental waste without any extra effort.
- Automate compliance with trading partner requirements and regulatory agencies.
- Reduce fuel, capital, and labor expenses.
- Increase customer and team member satisfaction.
- Increase supply chain resilience.
Aim for Fully Automated Reporting
Supporting sustainability adds carbon reporting, and reporting can either be a manual task or fully automated. The degree of automation depends on data collection and process improvements in supply chain planning and execution systems. The best possible solution will fully automate reporting, and this is an essential factor in choosing the best possible route to sustainability.
Aiming for fully automated emissions reporting will point your company to the best possible route for decarbonizing its supply chain.
For example, flexis ProfiTOUR tracks and calculates carbon tonnage for delivery fleets in real-time, accounting for dynamic parameters while optimizing vehicle routing and scheduling.
Embedding emissions functionality into logistics execution enables the highest degree of accuracy and automation possible.
Start By Picking Low Hanging Fruit
If your company is like most, emissions reporting begins by going after low-hanging fruit. Collecting and reporting on GHG emissions data is easiest in Scope 1 and Scope 2, and it prepares a company for venturing further into the jungle.
Beware of the 800 Pound Gorilla Waiting in Scope 3
Scope 3 is the 800 lb. gorilla of sustainability. Most GHG emissions in a supply chain are in Scope 3, but third parties manage this data, and your company has no control over that. These companies do not have the time to monkey around with data requests from your company or any other business.
There’s too much trouble and risk for everyone to justify this integration. Besides, there is a supply chain wildfire to fight, and businesses are fighting record fuel prices, inflation, higher taxes, and government policies that are increasingly out of touch with their needs.
Does your company have time to manage requests for emissions data from hundreds or thousands of customers? I’m guessing the answer is “no” because supply chain partners refused to monkey around with such requests even in the best times. The good news is that there is a new solution for dealing with this gorilla.
Get the Scope 3 Monkey Off Your Back
A new class of intermediaries is emerging that can make it easier to obtain Scope 3 data, getting the monkey off your back. A cloud solution acting as a hub between your enterprise and its external trading partners can aggregate GHG emissions and enable Scope 3 reporting. The most innovative company in this new space is BigMile, and their technology is integrated into the flexis solutions.
BigMile’s turnkey solution eliminates the risk of developing and deploying such a solution, saving years of development effort. Its API is embedded into flexis solutions for transportation planning, routing optimization, and ProfiTOUR’s dynamic vehicle routing.
flexis apps automatically capture and report GHG emissions as a byproduct of logistics execution. Compliance with governing agencies is assured, and all certifications, revisions, and regulation changes are managed for users.
BigMile also offers a platform with a UI to supplement flexis solutions for collecting emissions data from trading partners who are not using flexis apps. Supplier and vendor systems upload emissions data to a central repository shared by the flexis app. This venue and the seamless integration of flexis provide a one-stop accounting and optimization solution for GHG emissions.
Combining flexis optimization with BigMile’s carbon accounting creates an elegant, simple solution that automates the complexities of measuring and reporting emissions to regulatory requirements. Compliance reporting cannot get any easier.
Conclusion
Supply chains can successfully navigate the jungle of sustainability if they know what to look for. Fully automating the capture and reporting of GHG emissions and focusing process improvements on strategic objectives will reveal the path. The visionary solution pioneered by flexis and BigMile makes this much easier, and it can accelerate decarbonizing a supply chain.
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