Bills of lading are a foundational document representing ownership of cargo in transit and are widely used in trade finance. A couple of weeks ago the Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) published a groundbreaking study assessing the environmental impact of digitizing bills of lading. It commissioned consultancy SIA, which assessed that every electronic bill of lading could save 27.9 kg of greenhouse gas emissions. Extrapolating that figure over the industry’s 15.8 million paper bills yields a potential CO2 emissions saving of 440,820 metric tons per year.
Separate calculations were performed for electronic delivery orders (eDO) used in GSBN’s cargo release application, which can save around 16.9 kg per shipment. GSBN applied the figures to the 120,000 electronic bills of lading (eBLs) its DLT network supported in 2023, plus the one million usages of its cargo release application, giving a CO2e reduction of 20,428 metric tons.
We didn’t immediately publish the news because we wanted to fact check the research, so there was some back-and-forth about the data. We only explored the bills of lading and concluded the figures are on the high side, but not outrageously so. Our rough figure using generous average mileage came to 16.2kg per bill of lading versus 27.9kg from the study.
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