Towards multimodal marketplace platform for SCOPE 3 emission-aware logistics – designing ADMIRAL marketplace

Logistics operations embedded in global supply chains generate a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions which, until recently, have only been viewed from a more holistic perspective. Scope 3 emissions include indirect emissions that occur in the upstream and downstream activities of an organisation e.g.,
from transportation providers, suppliers, retailers, employees, and customers. Scope 3 emissions make up a majority of the carbon footprint of most organizations, but studies show that they are hard to measure and manage in the context of companies due to several reasons (Kojo, 2023), e.g., data availability and quality. Also, the reporting and verification of Scope 3 emissions are not consistent and transparent. Therefore, we need new solutions that can make it easier to collect, combine and share emissions data in the logistics service chain.
End-to-end visibility in the logistics chain goes beyond a focal company’s boundary and extends to freight ecosystem partners, such as customers, suppliers, freight forwarders, and logistics service providers. This requires a means to organise the collaboration. The concepts of digital platforms and digital ecosystems have emerged within this context bringing different ecosystem stakeholders together, allowing them to communicate, share data and interact and, therefore, also simplify the complexities of day-to-day transactions among cargo stakeholders (Wang & Sarkis, 2021). Our study provides insights on how a digital logistics marketplace including emissions data is developed in a project consortium consisting of four development cases connected by the marketplace. The cases focus on different logistics service operations (truck, train, port). The three-year development process is still ongoing, and at this point we can report the observations and findings from the first year. This research follows a qualitative approach to examine the development of a digital marketplace for
emissions-aware logistics services in the context of the EU co-funded project ADMIRAL. Currently we have an initial concept of an emission-aware logistics marketplace as well as the first experiences of defining such a platform. However, several issues are challenging the development of such a marketplace – such as data sharing, governance model and overcoming the chicken and egg problem. The marketplace aims to facilitate interaction between the sellers (producers) and the buyers (users). The sellers operating on the platform offer their logistics services according to rules set by the platform operator. The emission-aware
buyers acquire these services via the platform. The marketplace is not only a transaction platform, but it also provides capability for application developers and integrators to build and integrate applications on top of the marketplace utilising the developer portal. The marketplace operator facilitates the operation and enables value creation between the different parties of the platform. Furthermore, the operator determines and controls who can access the platform and under what conditions (e.g., curation). Thus, the marketplace has many challenges to tackle, and it remains to be seen how we will succeed in our journey towards a multimodal marketplace platform for Scope 3 emission-aware logistics.