Automatic calculation of freight emissions 

For weight-based activities, the Climate Hub can automatically calculate the emissions generated when transporting these goods – from the origin of the material to the location where the goods are used. This article explains how the automatic calculation works and which information is required.

1. What is calculated?

For every activity with the unit type weight, the Climate Hub can determine the freight route as well as the associated CO₂e emissions. This is based on Climatiq's Intermodal Freight module, which relies on the emission factors of the Global Logistics Emissions Council (GLEC).

The Climate Hub only needs a starting point and a destination, as well as the freight weight. The choice of transport mode (road, sea, rail, air or inland waterways) and the route itself – including any transshipment points at ports, airports or railway stations – is determined fully automatically. You therefore do not need to define a transport mode or any intermediate stops yourself.

2. Requirements

For the calculation to be triggered, the Climate Hub requires the following information:

Postal code, city and country are mandatory fields for both suppliers and all structural elements. It does not matter whether the input is in German or English (e.g. "Deutschland" and "Germany" are recognized equally).

If any one of the three details is missing at the starting point, no calculation can be performed. A transport activity is still created, but it is marked as "no calculation performed".

If the freight weight has not yet been entered (input = 0), a request is still sent, but the result will be 0 kg CO₂e.

3. How to enable the freight calculation

3.1 During the stage-specific CSV upload (Link)

Screenshot 

1. In your CSV file, fill in the columns "Country of supplier", "City of supplier" and "Postcode of supplier".
2. In the column "Enable freight calculation", set the value to "Yes" if a freight calculation should be triggered for the respective activity (leave blank if not desired).
3. When uploading, the "AI data enrichment" window opens. There, select the phase or sub-phase in which the calculated transport activities should be stored and click on "proceed".  
   
   Note: For activities in Raw materials and semi-finished products as well as Packaging material, the sub-phase Inbound logistics is preselected by default; however, you can choose any other sub-phase at the same level.
   
   

3.2 Directly in the Climate Hub

1. Create an activity with the unit type weight in a phase or sub-phase.
2. In the "Supplier details" section, fill in the supplier's country, city and postcode. This section is always displayed but can only be used once a weight unit has been selected.
   
3. Enable the "Include in freight calculation" toggle and select the phase or sub-phase in which the freight route should be stored.
4. Save the activity. The calculation is then triggered automatically.

4. Displaying the results

The total result (kg CO₂e) is created as a direct CO₂e activity and automatically linked to the original activity. The name of the created transport activity is composed as follows: "Transport of" + name of the source activity

    Example: Source activity "Steel" → Transport activity "Transport of Steel"

The transport activity is automatically set to the status "Review" and can be identified in the respective activity list by a transport icon at the beginning of the row.

Via the "Freight calculation" pop-up on the transport activity, you can see the complete breakdown of the route:

• Source activity, starting point and destination
• Legs: Each individual leg, including the mode of transport, distance (km) and the allocated emissions (kg CO₂e)
• Transshipment points: No distance is provided for these
• Confidence: A value between 0 and 1 is provided for both the starting point and destination. This indicates how well the automatically determined location matches the location entered.
• Total row: Total distance and total emissions of the route

    Example: Transport from Pittsburgh, USA to Berlin, Germany

Using the Edit button on a transport activity, you can also view the usual detail view of a direct CO₂e activity. Since this is an automatically calculated activity, the following information is read-only:

• Name
• CO₂e (direct) value, type of direct CO₂e value, and unit
• Breakdown of gases (remain empty)
• Data source information
  • System boundary: Displayed as "total". The system boundaries of the individual emission factors can be found in Table 4.4 of the PDF:
  • Several data sources used by Climatiq are listed

You can still fill in the fossil and biogenic carbon content, the primary data share calculation, and the data quality check for emission factors yourself, as usual.

5. Updating and deleting

• Changes to the source activity (input, unit, postcode, city, country, toggle) automatically trigger a new calculation – the associated transport activity is updated accordingly.
• Changes to the Company tab (e.g. a new address) only affect newly created transport activities, not retroactively affecting already calculated routes.
• You can remove the freight calculation in two ways:
  • Disable the "Include in freight calculation" toggle on the source activity and save it again, or
  • Delete the transport activity directly – the toggle on the source activity is then automatically disabled.

6. Good to know

• Climate Hub deliberately uses only the starting point and destination as input (no manual definition of individual route legs), so that Climatiq can automatically select the most realistic route and the appropriate transport mode.
• Empty runs and vehicle idle times are already included in the GLEC emission factors and do not need to be accounted for separately.
• In the PCF report, the topic of transport is explained in chapter "3.8 Handling of Transport"; the emission factors used for the transport activities are additionally listed individually in the table of emission factors used in chapter 4.4.