How do I work out emissions from trucking Ballari iron ore to the port?
Multiply tonnes carried by road kilometres and by a factor for the truck class, or use the diesel the transporter actually burnt times 2.68 kg CO2 per litre. If you pay the transporter, it is your Scope 3 category 4.
Two ways
- Distance based: tonnes x km x factor per tonne km. The Smart Freight Centre India default for 30 to 50 tonne trucks is 0.0663 kg CO2e per tonne km.
- Fuel based: litres of diesel from the transporter x 2.68 kg CO2 per litre. Better when you can get it.
Return trips
Ore trucks often return empty. Published tonne km factors usually include typical empty running; do not add the empty leg again.
Rail
Moving ore to a rail siding and then by rail cuts emissions per tonne km sharply. Calculate each leg with its own mode factor.
Illustrative trip to the port
- Load: 35 t; distance: 300 km
- 35 x 300 = 10,500 tonne km
- 10,500 x 0.0663 = 696 kg CO2e
Load and distance are illustrative; 0.0663 kg CO2e per tonne km is the SFC India default for 30 to 50 tonne trucks, well to wheel.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads the energy invoices behind the making stage into a fingerprinted Scope 1 and 2 record, and keeps material invoices on the Scope 3 trail. Material factors come from your supplier or a named database and are labelled with their source, so the product figure can be traced line by line.
Sources: Smart Freight Centre, GLEC Framework, GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard, IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy
Last reviewed 2026-10-21.