Eco-score transport - en

Introduction

In January 2021 the eco-score has been launched. The eco-score is a label that indicates the environmental impact of a product. It is based on the lifecycle of ingredients in a product and their relative impact. This impact has been assessed for the agricultural methods used in France.

Although the eco-score is based on France, OFF would like to extend the eco-score to other countries. This involves adding the country specific aspects for:

• labels
• packaging
• logistics

In this document the logistic aspects are investigated.

Approach

The eco-score calculation adds a correction to the base Agribalyse data in order to correct for additional transport. This should correction should favor products, which are produced near to the consumer.

There are two transport corrections that can be taken into account:

• ingredient transport - transport of individual ingredients to the production location. Is this already accounted for in Agribalyse? Can it be finetuned?
• product transport - the impact of transport between production location and consumption location.

Caveat

Before diving into all kind of modelling, we must ask ourselves whether it is worthwhile. We might add all kind of complexities, which have no influence on the end result.

The base Agribalyse data probably have an error of 10% or more, as it is the result of averaging and combining all kinds of data. So if we correct for a transportation impact, it is of no use to add details better than that 10%. We will evaluate this when we start the calculations.

Transport modes

Goods can be transported via road, rail or waterways. The transport modes are described in Eurostat report (2009).

The goods we are interested in (related to food) fall in the following NST/R categories (table 4.6, p66):

• 0/1 - cereals;
• 0/2 - potatoes, other fresh/frozen fruits and vegetables;
• 1/6 - foodstuffs and animal fodder;
• 1/7 - oil seeds and oleaginous fruits and fats;

We assume that Agribalyse takes care of the environmental impact in producing consumer ready products. This implies we are not interested in the transport of bulk raw products.

NST/R category 1/6 will be the most important category. For this category the most important transport mode is the route (table 4.7, p67).

Transport routes

We should look at the environmental impact for transporting goods between the production location and the consumption location. If both locations are known we can use the road distance between the two locations to get a good indication.

If these locations are not known, we need to use an estimation based on the information that we do have. The more unformation we have, the better the estimate will be.

No info

Without any additional info, there is not much to estimate. We know that it will be on average half the circumference of the world and probably much less. And this will also imply that the product is transported by sea and/or air.

Purchase country

If we know the country where the product was bought, we can make two assumptions:

• product is also produced in the country;
• product will be consumed in the purchase country;

We can then take an average transportation route of half the size of the country. This will also imply a route by road.

Production country

If in addition to the purchase country, we also know the production country, we can determine the route between both countries. This might involve transport by road, air or sea. Which transport means is used will also depend on the product category.

As we do not know the exact location of production or consumption, we need to use the geographic center of a country as an approximation.

Actual Locations

If either the purchase (consumption) or production locations are known, we can perform a more detailed calculation based on the the two locations and/or geographical centers. Such a calculation will be a low estimate, as we do not take into account the actual distribution network (distribution centres, transport network, purchase places).

Score

The CO₂ impact must be translated to a score from 0 - 100. A score of 100 represents the country in question, i.e. the product did not cross a border. Any other country should be less than 100. A score of 0 represents the worst case, i.e. the largest impact. These scores must be calculated for each origin. These scores will be applied as bonus, so it is assumed that the ACV of the product is the worst case.

The steps involved are:

• Max-impact - we need a good estimate for the maximum CO₂ impact. You would expect that getting something from an island in the Pacific (20.000km away) would have the most impact, but is better than transporting something from Greece to France by truck. We set the maximum impact at the largest distance by maritime mode. This might punish road transport as well. This value will be used to normalise all other impacts. In practice this implies that only the islands in the Pacific will have a score of 0.
• Transportation Mode impact - when we do not know the mix of transportation modes used between countries, we will assume that the worst mode has been used, i.e. the mode with the worst impact.

The formula for the score of an origin for a country is:

score_origin(country) = 100 - max(impact_origin(maritime), impact_origin(road)) / max_{all origin}(impact(maritime))*100.

with

• impact_origin(maritime) - the impact for origin for the maritime transportation mode
• impact_origin(road) - the impact for origin for the road transportation mode
• max(impact_origin(maritime), impact_origin(road)) - the maximum impact of the two transportation modes for the origin.
• max_{all origin}(impact(maritime)) - the maximum impact of all maritime origins

Mixed logistics

If we have the transportation mix this becomes:

  scoreorigin(country) = 100 - summode=0N fractionorigin(mode) impactorigin(mode) / maxall origin(impact(maritime))*100.

with

• impact_origin(mode) - the impact for origin for the transportation mode
• fraction_origin(mode) - the fractional impact for origin for the transportation mode [percentage]
• max(impact_origin(maritime), impact_origin(road)) - the maximum impact of the two transportation modes for the origin.
• max_{all origin}(impact(maritime)) - the maximum impact of all maritime origins

Country correction

And finally we need to apply a country correction. The lifecycle data is based on France, and especially on the size of France. Any logistics impact should correct for this, i.e. subtract the impact for France and add the impact for a country.

To do this the mean transportation distance for a country will be estimated and the corresponding environmental impact. The impact for France will be subtracted and the impact for the country added. The mean transportation distance is half of the largest distance that can be travelled in a country.

The non-mix formula becomes:

    scoreorigin(country) = 100 - (max(impactorigin(maritime), impactorigin(road)) - (impacthalf(France, road) - impacthalf(country, road)) / maxall origin(impact(maritime))*100

Calculation method

The entire calculation method for the logistics impact is put into a spreadsheet: here. The details of each worksheet of this spreadsheet will be explained below. This spreadsheet format should allow to make changes easier and see the impact of these changes.

The spreadsheet is setup is such a way, that the environmental impact of logistics can be calculated for any territory or country in the world.

Centroid sheet

The centroid sheet lists the centroid for each country in the world. With OSM the closest town has been identified. In order to be able to calculate distances by road through OpenStreetMap, we need identify the closest town to this centroid.

The centroids were taken from here.

For logistics that includes a maritime part, we need to know the closest container port for each country. There might be multiple container ports required for each country (east/west coast US, Atlantic/Mediterranean France).

The relevant container ports has been listed for each country, with a distance to the centroid and a link to the directions on OSM.

Intra country logistics

Does the eco-score or ACV take into account the impact of logistics required within a country? This probably needs to be changed for countries with different sizes. Not sure what is the best way to calculate the mean distance for each country.

A worksheet is reserved for the recording of the mean size and the environmental impact.

Container ports

We can start out with this list.

Thoughts

The calculation method used by Eco-score to assess and add the environmental impact of logistics to the base Agribalyse score is still in its infancy. Undoubtedly it will be improved and extended in the future. I list some thoughts here, where I see issues.

Base calculation method

The calculation method used for the Agribalyse normalisation and bonus/malus system makes it difficult to understand. Ideally the Agribalyse CO values and the transport malus are comparable. This is not the case at the moment. So what does a transport malus actually mean? I would prefer a method where the normalisation is done after applying all the bonus/malus. So that in effect the Agribalyse values are directly adapted by the bonus/malus application.

Transparancy

In order to extend the transport malus to other countries, I needed to know the actual calculation methods. These are not yet public. I hope everything will be be public and in the oublic domain.

Extendability

The eco-score calculation should be extendable. A public procedure should be setup, which allows to do this. This procedue could be similar to what is used in open software projects.

Reversal of evidence

The current calculation method makes a lot of assumptions about labels, logistics, etc. Ideally it should not be eco-score that makes the assumptions, but the producers that provide the data. This should reduce any greewashing allegations.

Country centroids

The centroids used for countries can be improved in several ways:

• population centroids - instead of the geographic centroids we need a center based on the population distribution, so that we can take better into account where the goods will flow (link). This is especially useful for countries we geographically unevenly distributed populations.
• very large countries (Australia, Canada, Chili) - the geographic centroids cover an area which is just to large, we need to look at the territories within the country seperately. This is also true for France if the DOM's are taken into account;

Maritime container seaports

For each country the most appropriate container port must be identified. The following issues complicate things:

• Some countries have multiple ports. Are different ports used for different origins?
• Landlocked countries (Burundi, Switzerland, Bhutan): where do they get their maritime goods from and how? We need to look at each country individually;

Optimally we need a local logistics expert for each country, which can fill in the details. We can offer the hooks so that in the future better values can be easily incorporated.