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Carbon reporting is becoming a bigger part of fleet managers' everyday responsibilities, with two significant developments in this area occurring during the current year, according to the Association of Fleet Professionals (AFP).
The organisation has first highlighted how some UK companies will be affected by the introduction last month of Scope 3 Greenhouse Gas Protocol emissions standards across the EU, which stipulate reporting for the first time across the entire value chain, including business travel, with the UK government currently consulting on whether to adopt similar, compulsory standards more widely here.
Secondly, the AFP notes the UK's Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme phase three, which applies to large undertakings and their corporate groups. This will extend the amount of energy consumption on which they must report from 90% of each business's carbon output under phase two, to 95% later this year, something that the AFP says could well affect fleets.
The organisation's chair, Paul Hollick, said: "Both of these moves represent large and potentially complex reporting tasks and are part of a general environment governance trend that over time is affecting more and more businesses that operate vehicles. It is certainly becoming a more prominent topic of discussion within the AFP.
"The facts are that reporting of this type is a specialised area and one with which more and more fleets are having to become conversant over time, yet genuine expertise is not that common.
"It is certainly an area where some fleet managers are looking to plug gaps in their own skills, especially when it comes to greater familiarity with the metrics and reporting formats used, as well as how to gather appropriate data."
Hollick explained that, although carbon reporting had so far tended to affect larger, often multi-national fleets, there were signs that the measures would affect more businesses over time. He said that this would not only be on a potential statutory basis, but because larger customers were increasingly demanding to see it from the point of view of supply chain compliance.
Hollick said: "Of course, fleets generally have a very good news story to tell here. With electrification, massive strides in decarbonisation have been made in recent years and there is a clear route mapped out for similar improvements in the future.
"However, in some instances, specific improvements need to be made, especially where fleets are tasked with meeting requirements to satisfy larger clients of their own businesses. This may especially affect commercial vehicle operations, where strides towards decarbonisation have so far been markedly slower than for cars.
"It certainly appears that this is going to be a growing area of fleet management, and one that is only going to become more of a day-to-day issue for our members."
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