The National Transport Commission will this week launch a paper that argues for significant productivity reform in the transport sector
The National Transport Commission will this week launch a paper that argues for significant productivity reform in the transport sector to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For supply chain managers, it will make for compelling reading.
Business is about to be hit with perhaps its greatest ever economic challenge – managing rising energy costs while reducing emissions. Transport providers will be closely scruitinised for their significant contribution to the carbon footprint of supply chain operations.
Carriers can sense the opportunity. The providers that can afford to invest and are able to partner with customers will reduce emissions through the take-up of more environmentally-friendly transport solutions, will probably reduce their operating costs at the same time, and stand out in a market that will increasingly demand greener transport.
Already we have seen major transport users like Woolworths write new environmental standards into their carrier contracts. As consumers demand greener products, as pressure mounts on business to reduce their carbon footprints, they will look to their suppliers for answers.
But perhaps more importantly, there is the opportunity to use climate change as leverage to win government support for green transport initiatives and productivity reforms.
Any wide-scale move to using alternative fuels or hybrid technology, for example, will only come with government incentives. If governments want trucking operators to run more environmentally-friendly trucks it will need to support this adoption through technology grants.
It is also widely acknowledged, as the NTC report points out, that the best thing the transport industry can do to reduce emissions is to improve its operational efficiencies. That means better road infrastructure to reduce trip times and city idling, and wider access for higher productivity vehicles like B-triples to reduce the number of polluting trucks on the road.
Governments can’t tell business to reduce its carbon output while denying transporters the conditions and tools to most effectively do so throughout the supply chain.
Every business must do and pay more in a carbon-constrained world, and supply chain management is at the forefront of change. But governments must lay the groundwork, quite literally, to play their part.
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