Breakbulk’s Emissions Building Blocks

By Marcus Lomax

From Issue 1, 2024 of Breakbulk Magazine


Smart Freight Centre, together with an alliance of carriers, freight forwarders, shippers and other organizations associated with the breakbulk sector, has formed a working group which sets out to establish an accounting and reporting methodology that aligns with the current multimodal industry guidance – the GLEC Framework and the current international standard, ISO 14083.

The advantage of creating a sector specific guidance in close collaboration with key players of the breakbulk industry means that it can reflect the industry’s transport operations and helps carriers standardize their emissions reporting to cargo owners, while relying on the best quality data: primary data.

With carrier activity data and energy consumption data, cargo owners can report Scope 3 emissions of the highest grade.

Since my involvement with this project in May 2023, the foundational methodological building blocks have been established. Revenue-tons/Freight-tons has been identified as the appropriate measure of ‘quantity of freight’ in calculating transport activity for the allocation of emissions. Emissions intensities and transport activity are also to be reported in tonne-kms to ensure harmonized multi-modal reporting. Shipment, vessel, vessel size category and fleet level reporting have been identified as possible aggregation levels for Scope 3 reporting based on primary data.


Fuel Factor

Since emissions are calculated by estimating the fuel consumption associated with a certain amount of transport activity and converting it with a fuel emission factor, the choice of fuel emission factor is an important topic as this directly impacts the number of emissions reported. The maritime industry is eagerly awaiting the IMO lifecycle assessment guidance (MEPC 80/7/4) which is due to be finalized and published at the 81st Session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC81), scheduled for Q2 2024.

This document will provide a widely accepted framework for defining emission factors which will become the standard for the maritime industry. Until then, the breakbulk sector will want to be able to calculate and report its emissions while aligning with other maritime initiatives such as Sea Cargo Charter and Clean Cargo to ensure harmonization.

The working group is currently testing out the methodology through a data collection exercise. This will test, for example, whether carriers are indeed able to calculate the shortest-feasible-distance or not – which constitutes the second part of the measure of transport activity alongside revenue-tons/freight-tons. Depending on the results, we will have to make the methodology feasible with what carriers can measure and report.

The working group was due to meet again in December 2023 to go over any last details before eventual publication of the guidance in 2024.


Marcus Lomax is technical manager at the Smart Freight Center.

TOP PHOTO: AAL transporting A-Class blades on MPV AAL Newcastle. CREDIT: AAL