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From October, carbon accounting will be introduced by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), when the voluntary guidance for the Climate Change Act is published.

It will suggest ways in which companies can keep track of their carbon emissions. Not, perhaps, top of the agenda for road transport firms struggling to cope with the double hit of recession and rising fuel prices, but there are reasons haulage firms might want to start keeping track of their carbon emissions.  

Regulation on carbon reporting will be introduced by the Secretary of State in 2012, so early preparation would ease the transition. According to Sam Balch, adviser with Defra, although there would be no auditing of the voluntary code, carbon accounting could improve internal management, provide leadership in the green agenda and show where operators can save fuel and costs.

Concerned customers

Also, as well as the stick of regulation, there is the carrot of more business. CO2 is something customers will take into account when deciding to let their largest contracts. For example, when the top supermarkets make promises to cut their emissions, their transport emissions will become part of that. Suddenly, being green means money.

According to Ronald Daalmans, environment manager with TDG, customers are beginning to take an interest in the subject. "A lot of customers want to see the numbers," he says. But he is wary because of the proliferation  in carbon accounting standards available.

So, the government guidance may provide some assurances. If hauliers follow the official standards, they won't be far wrong in meeting customers' needs in terms of accounting for carbon emissions.

Who pays?

However they are counted, carbon emissions will eventually be paid for. Some sort of cap-and-trade system will see businesses buy carbon credits if they produce more than an allocated target, and sell credits if they produce less.

At the United Nations' Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December, the UK haulage industry will get a sense of how likely it is to come under cap and trade in the near future.

Lobbying

But now is a good time to start considering the implications, both in terms of lobbying and long-term business decisions, says FTA director of policy and communications James Hookham.

As MT reported last week, Hookham believes the climate change debate should also change the industry's political lobbying. The road transport sector should shift away from lobbying on fuel duty alone and instead include it in a debate on carbon emissions and climate change, he says.

"One of the great opportunities that we have got is that the CO2 from HGVs is relatively stable compared with economic growth. It is about time we get the credit of the savings we are already making."

Hookham is also calling for the industry to join a pilot community to establish a base-line for carbon emissions and accounting in the road transport industry.

Meanwhile, the price of carbon is also up for debate. Professor Alan McKinnon, of the Logistics Research Centre at Heriot-Watt University, says an 'offset' for a flight, prices carbon at about £15/tonne. Lord Nicolas Stern, author of the influential 2006 Stern Review, has put it at £75/tonne, while the government's Climate Change Committee puts it at £40/tonne. Whichever figure is accepted will have a strong influence on future strategic transport decisions. If fuel duty were a carbon tax, it would be equivalent to around £220/tonne.

Hookham says this can be used by the industry to show it is already paying its way on carbon.

Shift in logistics

What is clear is that the induction of carbon into the business equation will change the way we transport goods. As Daalmans says, "the carbon model for optimisation is different to the cost model".

This difference could alter any number of strategic decisions for hauliers. For example, Daalmans points out that warehouses have a relatively low carbon footprint compared with the cost of running them, so while the trend towards centralisation of warehouses lowers cost, it increases the carbon footprint of the distribution network through longer journeys.

In other areas, the climate change lobby share the same goals with the haulage industry. For example, money and carbon are both wasted by traffic congestion - hauliers and greens could actually lobby together to get cars off the road to improve the carbon efficiency, and lower the cost, of haulage.