New CCR Insights report seeks to understand the current efforts of cargo owners in navigating scope 3 emission reductions. The results show that about one-third of companies surveyed have set scope 3 emission targets so far and about every fifth has set scope 3 emission targets for transportation, with some differences across sectors and company sizes.
Decarbonization and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions are on the agenda of businesses internationally. So far, most efforts have targeted companies’ direct emissions (scope 1 and scope 2). Currently, a growing number of companies take steps to influence emission reductions in their supply chains. These scope 3 emissions, also referred to value chain emissions, can reach significant levels among total emissions.
Motivated by a pressing need to provide a comprehensive overview of cargo owners’ efforts to decrease end-to-end transport chain emissions, this report summarizes findings from a nationally representative survey of 300 Finnish companies.
"Regulation on decarbonization is mainly transport mode-specific; on the contrary, cargo owners are increasingly interested in optimizing their transportation chain emissions door-to-door, including multiple transport modes. With the survey, we aimed to investigate whether this is the case of early movers or a broader interest across sectors", says Antti Saurama, one of the report authors and GreenConnect PI.
The CCR Insights report sought to understand decarbonization drivers, the precision level of the target setting for overall scope 3 emissions, specific targets for transportation, insights into the role of sustainability in the broader competitive advantage context and expected leverages of transportation modes. One of the main findings showed that about one-third of the companies surveyed have set scope 3 emission targets so far and about every fifth has set scope 3 emission targets for transportation.
"Interestingly, respondents argued that they haven’t set transportation targets as such as they’ve perceived them to be too detailed when looking at scope 3 as a whole. Hopefully we’ve struck a cord and cargo owners are increasingly aware about the opportunities for using leverages such as purchased transportation solutions as means to decrease their total emissions because as we know, scope 3 emissions can be significant", comments Titiana Ertiö, the first author of the report.
In addition, the results show that customers’ demands are the top reason for pursuing carbon-neutrality, alongside taking responsibility for the environment and requirements set by regulation. Respondents estimated that road transportation is expected to cut emissions the fastest. Broadly, half of respondents estimate their companies are at the same level of environmental sustainability as their competitors’.
"The prevalence of scope 3 targets in Finland, especially for transports, is still limited. Our results show evidence that companies consider transportation targets setting still during 2024 and especially middle-sized companies are expected to follow suit, anticipating encouraging developments for the near future in Finland", Saurama states.
Considering the potential for transport emission reductions globally there is huge potential for novel collaborative models across transportation chains, new sustainable transport concepts, customized services, differentiation in markets, and, ultimately, competitive advantage.
The CCR Insights report is part of the ongoing GreenConnect – Connecting green transportation to new competitive advantage in transport solutions -project funded by Business Finland under the Wärtsilä-led Zero Emission Marine -programme.
