ISO 14083 Transport GHG Report

ISO 14083:2023 (Quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions arising from transport chain operations) was published in March 2023 as the international standard codification of the Global Logistics Emissions Council (GLEC) Framework. Its publication marked a significant shift in the legal standing of logistics emission accounting: where the GLEC Framework was a voluntary industry standard adopted by willing participants, ISO 14083 is an international standard that can be referenced in legislation, procurement rules, and contract terms. The EU has since referenced it in CSRD implementation guidance for logistics companies, and several EU member states are citing it in public procurement criteria for transport services.

The standard defines how emission intensity values (EIVs) should be determined for each transport mode — default values based on publicly available fleet statistics, or primary data values collected from actual operations. For road transport, EIVs are calculated in grams of CO₂e per tonne-kilometre, varying by vehicle class (HGV, LGV), fuel type (diesel, LNG, electric, hydrogen), load factor, and Euro emission class. For sea freight, EIVs vary by vessel type (container, bulk, tanker, Ro-Ro), deadweight tonnage, and route. For air freight, they vary by aircraft type and route distance. Hub operations — warehousing, terminals, ports — are calculated separately based on energy consumption per throughput unit.

For logistics providers, ISO 14083 enables them to issue transport emission certificates to customers that are methodologically consistent and independently verifiable. This is increasingly a commercial requirement: major shippers including Amazon, Unilever, IKEA, and Nestlé have publicly committed to zero-emissions logistics by 2040 and require carrier emission data aligned to ISO 14083 to measure progress. For shippers using these logistics providers, the ISO 14083 certificates feed directly into their GHG Protocol Scope 3 Category 4 and 9 calculations. Sustalium handles both sides of this relationship — logistics providers can generate customer-facing emission certificates, and shippers can aggregate carrier certificates into their own Scope 3 inventory.