Does a detailed freight emissions calculation really matter?

Logistics and transportation account for a substantial share of global greenhouse gas emissions. An increasing number of companies are faced with the challenge of calculating their direct and indirect emissions, and to do so, they can choose between different standards, methods, and emission factors or intensities of varying granularity and complexity. Based on a case study of several modes of transportation in the European and US transportation networks of a large global grocery retailer, our research shows that more detailed input data do not necessarily lead to lower emissions results. Our calculations demonstrate that emissions estimates can increase up to fourfold when moving from low to high levels of data quality. These results highlight the importance of incentives that policymakers should consider when developing calculation standards and frameworks, which should encourage companies to gather more detailed, albeit costly, data and to calculate emissions more accurately.