Eco-score transport - en

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 centers, transport network, purchase places).

Transport environmental impact

The environmental impact of transport logistics is multifold: from the infrastructure itself to the usage of the infrastructure. Usage impact is not only CO₂ emissions, but also small particles, replacement of vehicles, etc, etc. (wikipedia)

Agribalyse attempts to combine all impacts into a single number (pef). We need a similar number for transport logistics. And this number needs to be comparable to the Agribalyse umber, so that the two can be combined. Is any such data available?

The Agribalyse analysis lists the CO₂ impact for each product category. This CO₂ impact is 21.6% of the total impact (ref).

If we have a CO₂ impact and percentage for transport, the two numbers can be combined.

The Eco-score-model uses a mix of transport modes for each country as taken from the Eurostat report. Why use a mix of modes, when for the food products only one mode is relevant? The eco score document speaks of "marchandises" numbers. Is this the food part?

From the Ademe via the Eco-score documentation (can not access Ademe data):

• Road 79 g eq./Tkm
• Maritime (Suez) 7 g eq. per tonne km
• Maritime (Atlantic) 11 g eq. per tonne km

Calculation method

Required data

The relevant spreadsheet can be found here.

Country geographic centers

The centroids can be found here. In order to be able to calculate distances by road through OpenStreetMap, we need identify the closest town to this centroid.

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 ports

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.