The World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) and CDP have assessed action towards the decarbonisation of 90 major transport companies from around the world and found that action and progress are limited.
In new research, the WBA and CDP said only 7% of companies have committed to phasing out fossil fuels and there is an "urgent need" for more investment in research to develop and scale sustainable alternatives.
It added that transport is responsible for 37% of global carbon emissions among all end-use sectors — and WBA and CDP are calling for greater collaboration across the sector to combat climate change.
The research also highlights health and safety concerns, noting that only 43% of companies have a publicly available policy statement committing to respect the health and safety of workers and just three companies disclose quantitative information on health and safety.
"The World Benchmarking Alliance's new Transport Benchmark highlights an urgent need for the sector to work together to develop and scale sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels ... the comprehensive analysis of 90 companies covers 25 airlines, 9 rail companies, 6 road companies, 17 shipping companies, and 33 multimodal companies," the research said.
The research was conducted in partnership with CDP, the non-profit that runs the world's environmental disclosure system, and assessed companies including American Airlines, Japan Airlines, Ryanair, Qatar Airways, Maersk, Royal Mail and FedEx.
The research said it used the Assessing Low-Carbon Transition (ACT) methodology that drives climate action by benchmarking companies against advanced, science-based metrics.
WBA and CDP noted that transport has the highest reliance on fossil fuels of all sectors, with more than 90% of transport energy coming from crude oil-derived products.
Despite this, the research noted that only 7% of companies assessed have committed to phasing out their use of fossil fuels.
"Across all companies, 85% have fleets which are incompatible with a low-carbon future but the majority fail to disclose any plans for changing this," it said.
Need for alternative fuels, cleaner vehicles
"Some of the solutions that transport operators need to adopt, such as alternative fuels (including ammonia, hydrogen, and sustainable aviation fuel) and cleaner vehicles (including electric trucks) are still in early development and analysis showed that on average only 0.3% of total transport-related revenues are invested in research and development (R&D) into low-carbon technologies and fuels, such as electric vehicles and sustainable aviation fuels."
Investment in R&D is also critical according to the report, to ensure that new technologies can come to market more quickly.
However, WBA and CDP 94% of companies do not provide any meaningful data on research and development into low-carbon vehicles and fuels.
The research noted that only three out of 90 showed any significant support for low-carbon policy and just six directly work with infrastructure operators to build low-carbon solutions and 48% of the benchmarked companies have a strategy to help customers to reduce emissions but none of the companies had set measurable targets for customer engagement to encourage low-carbon alternatives.
"Transport accounts for 37% of global carbon emissions, so the sector has to step up if we are to keep 1.5 alive. The large-scale change needed cannot be achieved without every company getting actively involved across their business. There is an urgent need for collaboration to identify and scale solutions," said Vicky Sins, World Benchmarking Alliance's Decarbonisation and Energy Transformation Lead.
Amir Sokolowski, CDP's global director of Climate Change, said ACT assessments are a "robust way to evaluate the performance of the top emitting sectors."
"Companies must go further in setting not only long-term targets, but near-term targets and credible climate transition plans to demonstrate how they are going to reach these targets, currently, only 51% of companies within the benchmark have net-zero targets," Sokolowski added, noting that these plans must be disclosed so they can be measured and managed.
"This is not happening across the sector. This means that vital risks are not being assessed or addressed, and all players could be left behind as we see a rise in regulation on mandatory disclosure," the CDP's global director of Climate Change added.
The top five performing companies across the Transport Benchmark are Singapore-based ComfortDelGro, a company operating vehicles in seven countries, including bus, taxi, rail and car rental; French postal service company La Poste Groupe; UK public transport firm, FirstGroup; NS Groep – the principal passenger railway operator in the Netherlands; and Maersk – one of the world's largest container shipping companies, based in Denmark.
