# Does SBTi require our freight emissions on a well-to-wheel basis?

Canonical: https://senseible.earth/answers/sbti-transport-emissions-well-to-wheel

Yes. Footnote 11 to C9 of the SBTi Corporate Near-Term Criteria V5.3.1 says all transport emissions must be reported well-to-wheel, or well-to-wake for air and sea, even though this goes beyond the GHG Protocol minimum boundary. The Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 keeps the rule in C5.6a.

## What well-to-wheel adds

- Tank-to-wheel: CO2 and other gases from burning the fuel in the truck, ship or plane.
- Well-to-tank: extracting, refining and moving that fuel before it reaches the tank.
- Well-to-wheel is the two added together. For electric vehicles, the upstream part is the electricity's generation and supply.

## Where it lands

- Freight paid to transporters: Scope 3 category 4 (inbound) or 9 (outbound), now with the fuel's upstream part included.
- Your own trucks: the burning is Scope 1; the fuel's upstream part goes in category 3.
- Under V2.0, footnote 22 says excluding category 3 does not remove the duty to report transport well-to-wheel.
- V2.0 also lists road, rail, sea and air freight as emissions-intensive activities, measured well-to-wheel (Annex A).

## What to send a buyer who asks

1. Mode and fuel for each lane: diesel truck, CNG truck, rail, sea, air.
2. Litres of fuel where you have them; otherwise tonnes and kilometres per shipment.
3. The tank-to-wheel figure and the well-to-tank factor you used, named, so the buyer can check or redo it.
4. Whether the figure is already well-to-wheel. Buyers double count when this is unclear.

## Example: one diesel truck lane

- Fuel used on the lane in a year: 1,500 L of diesel
- Tank-to-wheel CO2: 1,500 x 2.645 kg per L = 3,967.5 kg
- Add well-to-tank: the same 1,500 L times a published well-to-tank factor for diesel, such as the UK government conversion factors, with the source named
- Report the sum as well-to-wheel, and state both parts

Example lane. Name the well-to-tank factor you use and where it comes from.

## What Senseible does here

Senseible reads fuel slips and freight records and turns litres into tank-to-wheel CO2 with the factor on each line, keeping Scope 3 freight lines in a separate supplier evidence trail you can send a buyer. It does not set, submit or validate SBTi targets; SBTi Services validates them.

- [Well-to-tank from diesel invoices](https://senseible.earth/answers/well-to-tank-emissions-from-diesel-invoices)
- [Railway receipt freight emissions](https://senseible.earth/answers/railway-receipt-freight-emissions)
- [SBTi V2 emissions-intensive activities](https://senseible.earth/answers/sbti-v2-emissions-intensive-activities-suppliers)
- [Scope 3 supplier evidence](https://senseible.earth/scope-3-supplier-evidence)

Sources: [SBTi, Corporate Near-Term Criteria V5.3.1 (final, April 2026, in effect from 14 April 2026): C9 and footnote 11](https://files.sciencebasedtargets.org/production/files/SBTi-criteria.pdf), [SBTi, Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0, Criteria (final, June 2026): C5.6a, footnote 22, Annex A](https://files.sciencebasedtargets.org/production/files/Corporate-Net-Zero-Standard-V2-Criteria.pdf), [IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2, Energy (diesel default)](https://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/2006gl/vol2.html)

Last reviewed 2026-11-01.