The International Air Transport Association (IATA) and the Smart Freight Centre (SFC) announced a partnership to provide consistent and transparent CO2 emissions calculations for air cargo shipments — an important step for the global air transport sector to advance its decarbonization efforts.

In the announcement, the two organizations said they will focus efforts on developing the cargo component of IATA's CO2 Connect offering, which successfully launched its passenger version in 2022 and uses primary industry data to power highly accurate carbon calculations.

"The collaboration with the SFC Clean Air Transport Program will promote a common methodology in CO2 emission calculations and ensure accurate and consistent CO2 calculations are distributed to the industry's biggest shippers and freight forwarders in air cargo, supporting them with pre-shipment and reporting purposes," it said.

 
Frederic Leger, IATA's senior vice president for Commercial Products & Services said the organisation's partnership with the Smart Freight Center will help IATA to accelerate the development of CO2 Connect for air cargo as the most authoritative tool for carbon calculations.

"This is important for airlines, shippers and their customers who all need accurate calculations based on real data to support their contributions to global decarbonization efforts," Leger added.

Andrea Schoen, SFC Director of the Clean Air Transport program, lauded the "key milestone" reached with the IATA deal.

"The need for unified emissions data is stronger than ever, and this milestone will enable cargo transport service purchasers to make well-founded, long-term decisions," Schoen said, adding that transparency is key to driving decarbonization investments and activities, encouraging collaborative and synergetic action throughout the value chain.

"Our partnership with IATA will enable effective collaboration by building trust and exchanging information across the value chain, which, in turn, will help in accelerating our ongoing efforts in decarbonizing the aviation industry," the Clean Air Transport SF Director added.

The statement said IATA and SFC are working with Kuehne+Nagel as a pilot customer for IATA CO2 Connect for Cargo to ensure that the tool meets the needs and requirements of freight forwarders and their customers.

The SFC Clean Air Transport program comprises over 50 members, including airlines, freight forwarders, shippers and fuel providers. It engages in collaborative actions to support aviation's decarbonization efforts. 

Meanwhile, IATA's CO2 Connect for Cargo is a CO2 emission calculator for air cargo shipments, using primary data from airlines.  It will be available as of Q4 2024. 

It considers airline-specific fuel burn from both full freighter and passenger aircraft carrying belly cargo, airline-specific cargo load factors, and passenger load factors to determine the correct ratio to attribute to belly cargo.
 
That CO2 data output provided will be aligned with the IATA Recommended Practice 1678.

IATA said it would also provide further outputs considering well-to-wake (WTW), CO2e and CO2/tonne-km to meet requirements from shippers reporting in those metrics.