Roadmaps for Green Logistics

By Tim Foote, Founder & Group Managing Director at Logistics Executive Group

People like a routine. It provides a person with a sense of stability and security. I understand this. With routines, we can form processes that are predictable and in some sense comfortable. That said, changing routines can often be fun and exciting. Sometimes to bring that excitement to others, it is important to provide an illustration in the form of a roadmap.
In April’s Green Corridor Green Initiatives for Logistics, I wrote about how to make initiatives for your organisation so it can start to become carbon free.  In the article I lay down how to do this in a 3-step plan.

1. Identify sources of emissions
2. Create initiatives that will
 reduce the emissions
3. Prioritize your efforts

Challenging yourself and your colleagues to come up with initiatives that will reduce emissions and agree with your organisation’s business goals is not easy. Even getting the time from management to devote to initiative ideation may 
be difficult.
One thing that can help with moving forward in challenging the status quo is providing a picture of what the future could look like. With that picture, you can show others in the organisation how the future outlook for the business after the initiatives are implemented. By using what is called a “roadmap”, you can visually show how the initiatives would work over time, and as well, highlight the largest sources of emissions to your colleagues.

Below is a simple table style roadmap for a typical local delivery provider. This form of roadmap should be at least annually reviewed and updated. Many of the elements can change – like the current operational emissions number. Because businesses grow, there can be increases to emissions because that business growth itself, and therefore more deliveries and emissions are made do to 
that growth.

Bear in mind please, that a road map is only a vision of what could be the impacts of your initiatives. No one really has a crystal ball to see the future with. We can only make a reasoned guess. For instance in the above roadmap it is planned that only 5% of the transition to EVs will be done by 2030. This could be much higher if the price of EVs continue to drop.

When working on roadmaps in the past, I have noticed some people are really uncomfortable with trying to put in targets for such a distant future as 2050. Most sustainability roadmaps are stretched out to 2050 because the Paris Climate Accords (UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France, on 12 December 2015) marked that year as being significant. Of course you can shorten the timeline as you wish, but by stretching the timeline out, you can bring in the impacts of future technological changes – and for logistics companies new green technology is tremendously important.

There are many other ways to express a roadmap towards an emissions-free future. So please to look at other examples that are circulating in the industry.  Roadmaps can be a great way to engage others in your organisation with a positive vision of change. Do try to make one when you feel it helps.