CARBON reporting is becoming a bigger part of everyday fleet management, says the Association of Fleet Professionals – with two significant developments in 2024 potentially impacting on fleets.

First is that some UK companies will be affected by the introduction last month of Scope 3 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol emissions standards across the EU, which stipulate reporting for the first time across the entire value chain, including business travel. The UK government is consulting on whether to adopt similar, compulsory standards more widely here.

The second is the UK’s Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme phase three, which applies to large undertakings and their corporate groups. It 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 could well affect fleets.

Paul Hollick, chair, 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.”

He added that carbon reporting so far tended to affect larger and often multi-national fleets but there were signs that the measures would affect more businesses over time, not just on a potential statutory basis, but because larger customers were increasingly demanding it from a supply chain compliance point of view.

“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.”