A switch to electronic bills of lading (eBLs) from paper-based alternatives would result in an annual reduction of 440,802 metric tons of carbon emissions, a study commissioned by the Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) has found.
The study, released Wednesday, sought to quantify the per-document savings of migrating paper-based shipping processes to an electronic format as a way to explain the climate-based benefits of such a shift.
GSBN, a non-profit consortium established in 2018 and comprised of a range of shipping lines and container terminal operators, is one of a handful of eBL technology providers and has been pushing for adoption of eBL and electronic cargo release documents in recent years.
The study comes more than a year after nine of the top 10 global ocean carriers committed to move to 100% eBLs by 2030.
The study, “Impact of Digitalization in Driving Decarbonization in Shipping,” was conducted by the consultancy SIA Partners. It suggested that the “absence of a universally adopted digital platform creates interoperability challenges, complicating efforts to reduce carbon emissions.”
The carbon reduction figure in the study – 107,000 tons attributable purely to the physical movement of paper bills of lading around the world – is a small fraction of the 230 million tons of CO2 container shipping generated in 2023, according to AlixPartners’ 2024 Container Shipping Outlook report. CO2 emissions from container shipping rose 4% year over year in 2023, the AlixPartners report said.
Benefits beyond emission cuts
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in a 2023 report pegged the volume of emissions generated by shipping on the whole – not just container shipping – at 858 million tons, compared with 739 million tons from air transportation.
On a per-document basis, the GSBN study found that the potential CO2 reduction per eBL is 27.9 kilograms, and 16.9 kg for an electronic cargo release, also called a delivery order.
A cut in carbon emissions is just one of the benefits being pushed by advocates of electronic documentation. Others include the ability to edit documents in real-time, the chance to structure bill of lading data and the ability to marry eBLs with financial transactions, such trade financing.
“The journey to net-zero [emissions] is not just about cleaner fuels but also about transforming the very fabric of trade through digitization,” Alicia Lee, GSBN’s chief operating officer, said in a statement Wednesday. “Paper-laden processes are not only inefficient and insecure for modern trade but are underpinned by carbon-intensive land and air logistics.”
