Why Distance Tables Mislead Shipping Emissions Reporting: The Case for Voyage-Level Data

When companies calculate shipping emissions reporting, they often rely on distance tables, fixed values that assume every voyage is “typical.” The problem? At sea, reality rarely matches the assumptions. And those gaps add up.

A Rotterdam–Singapore Example

Let’s take a shipment from Rotterdam to Singapore.

Distance table: 15,650 km

Actual AIS-recorded route: 18,000 km

Vessel emissions factor: 50 g CO₂ per tonne-km

The difference:

Distance table → 782.5 kg CO₂ per tonne

Actual route → 900 kg CO₂ per tonne

Gap: +117.5 kg CO₂ per tonne (+15%)

That’s just one shipment. Multiply it across hundreds or thousands of containers, and suddenly your Scope 3 emissions reporting for ocean freight is significantly off, masking inefficiencies and potentially misleading customers who care about green performance.

Why It Happens

Ships don’t sail “by the book.” Weather, congestion, routing restrictions, and port calls mean actual distances often diverge from tables. But spotting those differences requires real voyage data.

And there’s a catch: raw AIS (Automatic Identification System) data is messy. It’s riddled with missing points, duplicates, and speed anomalies. Left unprocessed, it doesn’t deliver usable insights. That’s why cleaning, normalizing, and modeling AIS data is essential if you want accurate CO₂ emissions calculations in shipping.

The CargoFP Advantage

This is where Cargo FootPrint (CargoFP), built by OceanScore, comes in. CargoFP is designed to turn messy AIS streams into decision-ready voyage-level emissions data.

Transforms raw AIS into clean, voyage-specific data

Benchmarks real distances and emissions with a margin of error as low as 1.13%

Gives forwarders and shippers actionable insights instead of assumptions

Builds credibility with green-conscious customers by replacing averages with facts

Why It Matters

Industry averages and distance tables may be convenient, but they’re misleading. As our Scope 3 at Sea report shows, even on the same trade lanes, emissions intensity can vary by a factor of four depending on vessel utilisation, speed, and operating practices.

That’s why leading shippers are moving away from static estimates toward accurate shipping emissions data based on real voyages. Only with this level of visibility can you identify reduction opportunities, optimise procurement, and turn Scope 3 reporting from a regulatory burden into a competitive advantage.