Can we use this externally?
A sustainability manager at a freight forwarder or carrier asks one question at three moments. The first moment is before recommending an emissions platform. The second is before giving a shipper customer a number for the customer's own report under CSRD, the EU sustainability reporting law. The third moment is before sharing transport data with the audit team of that customer.
The manager does not ask "is this accurate?", because everybody expects accuracy as a basic requirement. The manager also does not ask "is this integrated with our TMS (transport management system)?", because integration is a detail of the implementation.
The real question is whether the data can leave the organisation. Can a party that has no reason to trust the organisation use the data with confidence? This question separates internal reporting tools from data infrastructure that outside parties can trust. In practice, most freight emissions platforms were built to answer the questions about accuracy and integration, and not the question about external use.
Why external usability is the decisive criterion
Your customer's CSRD report
The number that you give a shipper customer becomes part of its Scope 3 Category 4 data. This data covers the emissions from the freight that the customer buys. The customer submits this data in a sustainability report, and a third party checks the report. This check is called assurance.
The assurer evaluates whether the data is credible and whether the methodology is appropriate and applied consistently. The assurer does not ask whether your customer's team feels confident about the data. Some data can be defended inside the company, but it cannot withstand an external review. Such data fails at the disclosure stage, and the number that fails is the number that you supplied.
Losing business over it
Large corporate shippers have Scope 3 obligations that require primary data from their logistics providers. Primary data is measured data from real operations. A minority of shippers already turn this into a contractual requirement. The 2024 report Strengthening the Chain from CDP, produced with HSBC, found that only 13% of businesses currently build climate-related requirements into supplier contracts. It also found that fewer than 6% require suppliers to disclose climate data at all.
This is still a minority today. For this reason, a forwarder or carrier that can already produce documented primary data has a real advantage over the majority that cannot. Such a company does not depend on spend-based estimates, which are calculated from money spent and not from real activity. The advantage becomes smaller as more buyers follow.
A previous article on freight's three-way data problem made the same point. Primary data is worth the effort only when a company can reuse it for every customer relationship. It is not worth the effort when the company must assemble the data again from the beginning for each customer.
What makes freight data externally usable: four attributes
If you read our earlier article on trust infrastructure, these four properties will be familiar, but the question is different here. In that article, the question was whether a calculation record withstands scrutiny in general. In this article, the question is a test that you run before you commit to a platform.
- Methodology credibility: the calculation must follow a recognised standard. This standard is ISO 14083, the international standard for freight emissions, together with the GLEC Framework, the industry guide to applying it. An assurance team will ask three questions: which methodology, which version and which emission factor database? If documentation cannot answer these questions, nobody can establish that the methodology is credible. The methodology documentation is therefore more than an extra attachment to the number, because it is what makes the number usable externally.
- Traceability: it must be possible to follow the number in the report back to the underlying activity. Between the transport event and the CSRD disclosure there is a chain of calculation steps. Each step must be documented, and each connection between two steps must be verifiable.
- Integrity: after a calculation is performed and a record is created, nobody must be able to alter the record. A correction must create a new record with an explicit audit trail. It must not overwrite the original.
- External verifiability: a person outside CO2Path and outside the two parties in the transaction must be able to check the calculation and its record independently. This person must not have to rely on the word of either side that the number is correct.
The limit is also the same as in that article. Meeting all four attributes guarantees that the calculation is consistent, traceable and unaltered. It does not guarantee that the emission factor supplied by a carrier is accurate. That is a separate question, and it stays with the carrier. No platform verifies it today, including CO2Path.
What this looks like from the other side of the transaction
"As freight forwarders we want to give our customers an accurate picture of their shipments' carbon footprint and also offer alternative transport solutions to help them meet their emission reduction goals. Getting quality data from our carrier partners and calculating emissions has been a challenge for us. Thank you to the CO2Path team for solving this."
Spyridon Kousis, CEO, DS Freight Forwarding IKE
The challenge described in this quote is getting quality data from carrier partners and then producing calculations that clients can rely on. This is exactly the sustainability manager's problem. Trust infrastructure is a shared standard that allows everyone in the chain to use the data with confidence. As a result, the same properties that make data usable for CSRD reporting also make it useful to the freight forwarder's clients. The trust problem is identical on both sides of the transaction.
What CO2Path provides to answer the trust question
CO2Path is built to answer the trust question with yes. Every calculation follows ISO 14083 and the GLEC Framework, and every output documents the methodology specification and the version of the emission factor database. Every calculation is linked to the input data that produced it. At the moment of calculation, CO2Path stores every result on a blockchain, a digital record that nobody can change afterwards. Any authorised party can verify this record. The answer to "can we use this externally?" is therefore part of the record from the moment of its creation. Nobody has to assemble it afterwards, when an audit request arrives.
Book a call to discuss your reporting needs → Request a demo