12 Days of Fleet FYIs: How and Why is Greenhouse Gas Reporting Done? | Utilimarc Fleet FYIs

Gretchen Reese (00:06):

Hey there. Welcome to Fleet FYIs, the weekly podcast by Utilimarc that reveals how you can make the most of your data for smarter fleet management. My name is Gretchen, and every week you'll hear from me and some of the industry's finest in candid conversations that will shed some light on not only two decades worth of data insights, but some of the industry's hottest talking points and key metric analysis with the aim to help you better understand your fleet from every angle. 

(00:33):

But before we begin, if this is the first time you've heard our show, thanks for stopping by. I'm so glad you decided to come along for the ride with us. But I've got a quick favor to ask you. Once you've finished today's episode, if you could take a few minutes to leave us a review on your favorite podcasting platform, we would really appreciate it. Give us a rating, five stars I hope, or tell us what you liked, or leave us a comment or a question about what you heard in today's episode. But if we haven't yet covered a topic that you're interested in hearing more about, let us know. We would be happy to go over it in detail in a later episode. If that sounds good to you, let's get back to the show. 

(01:11):

Hello everyone, and welcome to back to another episode of the Fleet FYIs podcast. And on top of that, welcome to day four of 12 Days of Fleet FYIs. If you've been on track with the podcast per day just like me, well done. I'm happy that hopefully, hopefully most of you have turned into each of the 12 Days episodes in this series thus far. Four down as of today, and eight to go. 

(01:41):

Today's another pretty cool topic that I think, actually well, I know, is pretty relevant right now, and that's greenhouse gas reporting. More specifically, what it is, how it's done, and who's doing it now?

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We all know that sustainability and climate change have become pressing issues for all types of businesses and organizations worldwide. Personally, I think there's more pressure than ever before for organizations to make their practices sustainable and then to actually report the results publicly. 

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The initial steps for making businesses greener is often reducing what they call the amount of greenhouse gases emitted through related activities that would be greenhouse gas creating. Now, greenhouse gases, I've said them a lot, but just so we all know, even though I'm sure we all do, greenhouse gases are responsible for global warming, which keeps the planet at habitable temperatures. However when GHGs are emitted excessively and the atmosphere becomes too warm, temperatures have the potential to become out of control and weather can become incredibly extreme and unpredictable. 

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So because of this, greenhouse gas reporting, also known as the process of carbon accounting, is becoming more common at organizations all over the world, whether by requirement or done voluntarily for transparency, you name it.

(03:01):

These reports measure how many emissions the organization emits in a certain period, whether it's by month or by year, and it breaks it down into which activities contributed what amount and exactly which greenhouse gases were emitted. So if you're ready to get into this intense but interesting topic, I say let's dig in. 

(03:35):

So firstly I wanted to touch on what greenhouse gases are exactly, and what each of their impact is on the environment. So if you remember from a previous episode, the four main greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases, which is actually a group of gases, but for the purpose of this episode, I will paint them as one of them itself.

(03:57):

Now, these gas emissions come from all types of human activity, such as electricity generation, transportation, agriculture, all different industries and so much more. And consequentially, countries with more activity in these sectors are greater contributors to greenhouse gases with China, the United States, and the European Union being the largest emitters overall. But also, if you take population density into the equation, that's no surprise, especially when it comes to the people with the largest exports worldwide.

(04:27):

Now, if we look at the first gas on this list, which is carbon dioxide, one that you've probably all heard of before. I'd actually probably pretty surprised if you didn't. You'll also know it by the elemental sign, which is CO2, but carbon dioxide is the most prevalent greenhouse gas in our atmosphere today. And it makes up about 80% of the emissions that are released in the U.S. alone. 

(04:50):

It's produced both through natural and unnatural processes, and it's pretty harmless in small quantities. CO2 is actually also essential for life on earth, and plants cannot go through photosynthesis without it. So, CO2 is also the most dangerous greenhouse gas in large amounts, which sounds a little bit counterintuitive, right? You know, it's harmless in small quantities, but when it comes to these large amounts, it can be drastic. And it makes its current record levels in our atmosphere a major concern. 

(05:22):

Now, this excessive amount of CO2 comes mostly from the burning of fossil fuels for energy production. But the thing is is that CO2 also has a long lifespan and lingers in the atmosphere for centuries, which makes it an even greater perceived threat. 

(05:37):

Second on my list is methane. Now, agricultural activities are the largest source of global methane, which is also seen in its elemental sign as CH4 emissions. Animals natural digestive processes and the decomposition of livestock manure are some of these activities that emit methane in great amounts. I'm sure we've all probably heard that as well by now. But other major contributors include the production and distribution of coal and natural gas as well as waste management and decay in landfills, which is why you see those pipes coming out of landfills to be able to release that gas without having it go boom and explode.

(06:11):

But (laughs) back on topic here. Methane emissions in the U.S. have dropped about 19% between 1990 and 2019, with the primary source shifting away from landfills and coal mining towards animal agricultural activities.

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Still, methane is the second most prevalent GHG following CO2, and despite its shorter lifespan of only 12 years, methane has a much greater ability to trap heat than CO2, also making it a serious global warming concern.

(06:40):

Third on my list, nitrous oxide, N2O for those of you that are really into your elemental symbols. It's present in the atmosphere due to both natural and human activities as well. It has a pretty length lifespan of about 114 years, although still it's less than CO2, which is a good thing. But still it only accounts for about seven percent of greenhouse emissions, it has nearly 300 times the impact of carbon dioxide on global warming. So whilst it's lifespan is shorter, it really doesn't mean that it's much better. 

(07:13):

It's typically emitted from agricultural activities, transportation, and other various industries worldwide, with agricultural soil management accounting for the majority of N2O emissions in the U.S. Now nitrous oxide also occurs naturally in the environment due to the circulation and breaking down of nitrogen from plants, animals, microorganisms, so you'll see it all over the place. But it's mostly in these large quantities that we tend to get a little bit more worried. But you'll notice that trend kind of continuing on here.

(07:43):

Now last on the list is fluorinated gases, but unlike other greenhouse gases as you've heard, fluorinated gases, also called your F-gases if you were to look them up on Google or whatever search engine you like. They don't occur naturally. And they're only emitted into the atmosphere through human activity. 

(08:01):

So these are a family of man-made gases that are typically used to substitute ozone depleting substances, such as refrigerants as well as in certain industrial processes like aluminum manufacturing. 

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Though F-gases do not strip away the Earth's ozone, it is a powerful greenhouse gas with devastating properties. These gases can stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years and are up to 23,000 times more impactful in global warming than carbon dioxide. So even in super small quantities, F-gases have dis- disproportionate effects on the environment, which isn't good. 

(08:48):

But when it comes to reporting, what is tracked and how? I'm sure you're probably all wondering that too. Organizations have different ways of reporting their GHG emissions depending on their function and the purpose of the reports themselves. Emissions can be reported at three levels, Scope 1, 2, and you guessed it, Scope 3. The lowest Scope measures emissions resulting from direct activities, such as fuel consumption by a company's internal combustion engine fleet. The second reports on emissions resulting from secondary activities like facility climate control and electricity consumption, which can involve electric vehicles. You guessed it. And the third is the highest level view, taking into consideration emissions from all indirect sources in your supply chain down to raw materials, distribution of goods, end of life treatment, and much more.

(09:40):

But for fleets, greenhouse gas reporting is typically done at a Scope 1 level, accounting for how much emissions resulted from the daily operation of your fleet's vehicles have well, become emitted into the atmosphere. (laughs). To get these figures as accurate as possible, you must consider the type of fuel being consumed, the types of vehicles in operation, and the vehicles' conditions themselves. 

(10:05):

With this information, designated reporting solutions, like for example, a business intelligence platform, can build out detailed dashboards showcasing your data in a visual way. And here fleet managers can actually view a breakdown of how much fuel they consumed, metric tons of greenhouse gases emitted per each fuel type used, and a trend of total emissions over the years.

(10:28):

Fleets that don't utilize their telematics data to access these types of reports can often receive these stats through their fuel card providers, but since fuel providers already have the information on fleet's fuel consumption, many are creating programs that further analyze data to come up with stats on greenhouse gas emissions.

(10:47):

But the next piece of this is who is reporting and why are they doing it? Well, to answer that, many big corporations are reporting on greenhouse gas emissions to ensure transparency for their customers and avoid being criticized for hiding information. Sparked largely by the Paris Climate Agreement and all the subsequential global initiatives, a major goal for many corporations is to have net neutral or net negative operations in the coming decades.

(11:11):

In fact, over 21% of the world's 2,000 largest public corporations have already pledged to reach net zero emissions in the future, which is pretty fantastic, and that's a very big goal that we have accomplished, which is great.

(11:25):

I mean obviously there's always room for improvement, but that's a pretty good start, I think. But essentially, this means that they have committed to not adding any new green- any new greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by way of offsetting and cutting down on what they do emit currently.

(11:38):

For these companies though to even reach these goals, thorough and transparent reporting needs to be done. I mean, that's just gonna be part of it. 

(11:47):

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which is called GHGRP, love a long acronym, actually I don't, but for the purpose of this episode, here's another one, also requires major GHG contributors to report annually on their emissions. Facilities are required to report on emissions if they meet certain requirements, such as exceeding 25,000 metric tons of CO2 per year. And due to this program, 7,600 facilities in the U.S. are currently required to report on their emissions annually, covering nearly 90% of the greenhouse gas emissions inside of the U.S. 

(12:24):

In addition to organizations required to report by the EPA, it is commonplace for government and municipality fleets to report on GHG emissions due to how closely monitored they are. This helps governments to understand the weak points that need improvement, and they can track progress towards their climate goals.

(12:47):

But I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Are you currently tracking greenhouse gases, or are you required to report them based on industry mandates, or perhaps a customer or investor push? I want to know. Tag me on LinkedIn, send me an email, a carrier pigeon, or use the hashtag #UtilimarcFleetFYIs. I always look forward to hearing what you have to say. But until the next one, which will be day five of the 12 Days of Fleet FYIs on Monday, I will see you then. Ciao. 

(13:24):

Hey there. I think this is the time that I should cue the virtual high five because you've just finished listening to another episode of the Fleet FYIs podcast. If you're already wanting more content, head over to utilimarc.com. Which is Utilimarc with a C, U-T-I-L-I-M-A-R-C.com for the show notes and extra insights coming straight from our analyst to you. That's all from me this week, so until next time, I'll catch you later.