If there is an emerging theme in the work of Professor Ross Garnaut – other than the desperate need for
If there is an emerging theme in the work of Professor Ross Garnaut – other than the desperate need for radical and urgent action on climate change – it is in the need for collaboration.
Deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions are only possible, the Federal Government’s climate change guru argues, with all countries contributing to abatement efforts. And perhaps even more importantly, collaboration across business networks, particularly on supply chain management, is crucial.
The challenge for any major business in a carbon-constrained world is two-fold: to reduce their own operational carbon footprints while working up and down the chain to help suppliers and logistics partners reduce theirs.
Distribution networks, Garnaut says, could be in for a radical shake-up. The proximity of distribution infrastructure to end customers, the logic of multiple freight handling to consolidate freight channels, is now all on the table.
Garnaut paints a particularly optimistic picture of a much wider take-up of diesel-electric hybrid trucks for urban deliveries and even near zero-emission heavy trucks for linehaul work (combined with a greater modal shift to rail). All that, he says ambitiously, could happen in under a decade.
Rising diesel prices will drive the move to cleaner, greener transport fuel technologies, Garnaut asserts. But what he fails to mention is those same cost increases will leave very little money for developing these solutions to the point where they are widely available and commercially viable.
Even the largest carriers, squeezed like never before, can clearly not afford alone the investment needed to develop alternative fuel technology. Many of their customers will surely be in the same boat.
The practical and economic logic behind operators developing technology in-house for their exclusive use just isn’t there. All parties in the supply chain must share the best ideas and collectively develop the solutions.
Garnaut argues Australian business possibly has the most to lose from the impact of climate change on the planet. Developing low-emitting distribution solutions, therefore, is an opportunity for Australia’s supply chain sector to make the biggest gains.
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