Green logistics: DHL unveils new carbon dashboard for emissions tracking

DHL Global Forwarding, a subsidiary of DHL, recently unveiled its GOGREEN Carbon Dashboard, a new service for emissions tracking.

Company officials said that this tool enables shippers to choose from various certified reports to get a clear handle on the main drivers of carbon emissions from the transportation modes used for pickup and delivery emissions in their supply chains, as well as account for and manage carbon and third-party emissions, with detailed and reliable CO2 Web-based mapping.

Alejandro Palacios, Vice President of Strategy and GoGreen, Americas, DHL Global Forwarding, told LM there were multiple factors which contributed to this new offering.

“In 2009 DHL ran a global study called ‘Towards Sustainable Logistics’ that aimed to understand the trends in green logistics,” he said. “We found that business innovation and customer demand for environmentally-friendly products and services will drive us to evolve into a carbon-efficient logistics industry. Based on these findings, DHL Global Forwarding developed a complete portfolio of green-logistics services that naturally follows DPDHL’s internal efforts towards improving our CO2 emissions and that of our suppliers in 30 percent by 2020. The Carbon Dashboard has been under development for about one year, and it came to life—thanks to a U.S.-based company that partnered with us as a live pilot.”

When asked what the biggest benefits of the new offering for shippers, Palacios said that the Carbon Dashboard is an online tool that maps, step-by-step, the CO2 emissions generated throughout the supply chain of any one of its customers, adding that It becomes a personalized modeling and decision-making instrument that allows DHL Global Forwarding to work with customers and design more efficient supply chain solutions.

The Carbon Dashboard has powerful KPI and analysis functionalities, and he said it focuses on the end-to-end view of the supply chain which significantly broadens the solution scope, and enables a holistic evaluation of emissions while factoring other business objectives like costs and time.

In April 2008, DHL parent company Deutsche Post World Net kicked off its GoGreen initiative, with a goal of reducing its carbon footprint for every letter mailed, every container shipped and every square meter of warehouse space used by 30 percent by the year 2020. This program has a three-pronged method of assessing, reducing and offsetting carbon dioxide emissions.

Noted green logistics expert Adrian Gonzalez told LM at the time that many shippers, especially those with a strong commitment to sustainability, expect their suppliers and partners, like logistics service providers, to demonstrate a similar commitment.