Emission factors and its influence on CO2 calculation A case study of Volvo Group

Abstract: Carbon dioxide emissions from freight transport are a great contribution to global warming. The increased awareness of its harmful impact leads to an increase of activities among companies. One part of it is the reporting of CO2 emission values. Several guidelines have be development by organisations on how to approach the reporting and the carbon footprint. However, no literature could be detected what challenges companies face when they try set an emission factor for such calculation and how it influences the accuracy and uncertainty of the output. This research tries to address these issues for road emission factors for international operating companies by conducting a case study of Volvo Group’s current calculation setup. Moreover, calculation was conducted in order to evaluate the potential influence of the emission factor on the calculated CO2 output. In addition, a company comparison with SKF Group and Tetra Pak was held to enhance understanding of challenges and ways of determining emission factors. During the research several challenges related to the CO2 calculation and its emission factor determination were detected. The findings emphasize on the need of companies to set their road emission factor with great care, since it has a direct impact on the calculation output, not only in numerical terms, but also on the accuracy and uncertainty of the value. In order to provide guidance to companies how to choose an emission factor, which adds accuracy without increasing the uncertainty three questions are suggested based on the findings of the research: What is the driver for the calculation? What quality of data is available? Which level of accuracy and certainty in regards of emission factor is wanted and how much effort is prepared to put into the task? Depending on the self-evaluation of each company a one-fits-all emission factor, a region or specific emission factor is suggested.