Smart Freight Centre: Global Logistics Emissions Council (GLEC) Framework v3.0

The Global Logistics Emission Council (GLEC) is a program from the Smart Freight Centre that aims to achieve widespread, transparent, and consistent calculation and reporting of GHG emissions. Companies and NGO’s that are dedicated to this goal work together in this program.

The GLEC framework, developed in this program, constitutes a methodology framework for calculating and reporting of logistics emissions. It offers multinationals with a harmonised, efficient, and transparent approach. The second GLEC framework version (2.0), has provided the principles upon which an ISO standard (ISO 14083) was developed that serves as a globally recognised standard for the calculation of GHG emissions from transport chains. The updated GLEC framework 3.0 is furthermore aligned with:

• The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, which establishes comprehensive global standardised frameworks to measure and manage GHG emissions from private and public sector operations, value chains and mitigation actions.
• The Global Green Freight Action Plan, which aims to reduce the climate, health, energy, and cost impacts of freight transport around the world.
• CPD Reporting, which supports companies, cities, states and regions to measure and manage their risks and opportunities on climate change, water security and deforestation.

The GLEC framework remains the primary industry guideline to support implementation of the ISO 14083 standard. By now, a GLEC 3.0 has been released, which can be found here. The Framework consists of two main elements:

• A step by step guidance on how to calculate emissions, including information on how to establish certain impact factors and a description of the type of information and requirements that the transport modes need to provide. This guides you through the calculation process of emissions from any type of freight transport mode.
• A chapter on how to use emission results. This discusses the ways in which emission results can be used and how that is done, including sustainability reporting, using emission reductions as a KPI, developing reduction plans, advocating for policy etc.
• A chapter on the data to use for calculating and reporting of emissions. This includes a discussion on what are emission factors, and refrigerant emission factors, and lists of default values.

If you want to know more about the GLEC framework there are several things you can do:

• Follow an e-training
• A GLEC calculation workshop which helps participants live with using the GLEC Framework to calculate and report emissions

Providing evidence on the type of fuel used

The GLEC framework does not prescribe that any evidence needs to included on the types of fuels that have been used. The company calculating and reporting emissions will just need to calculate the emissions based on their own data, but whether they have actually acquired a biofuel/renewable fuel seems to be left up to their own responsibility.

The framework does set out general guidelines for transport operators and logistics service providers, with a step by step approach to ensure that their customers can report the correct information.

If you want to use different emission factors than the standard factors provided in the GLEC Framework, then you need verification from a certification of the used product.