Transport companies should use their lobbying powers to request stronger requirements for energy use and emission reporting in the transport sector. Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK already have mandatory and voluntary regulations on company reporting regulations. These regulations apply to transport companies in some cases, although most of them are publicly owned organisations and therefore not required to comply with these rules.

The above could be achieved through legal obligations implemented at the regional, national or EU level or through voluntary agreements between organisations within the public transport sector (potentially through UITP). The requirement to accurately report energy use and emissions would encourage organisations to be more proactive in measuring these impacts, which would improve their visibility across the organisation and within the supply chain.

This would raise the profile of investments in energy efficiency and carbon emission reduction and show that efforts need to be made to ensure that the public transport sector remains a low-carbon option in the long term (when competing with electric cars). It would also support public transport sector partners in setting challenging but realistic targets for performance improvement.

The scope of emission reporting duties will need to be well defined, so that organisations can report key impacts without being required to report on a wide range of impacts which would become difficult and costly to measure and monitor. Without being too onerous, conversion factors used in reporting will need to be precise enough to enable a differentiation between operators. Those companies making an effort to improve their energy efficiency and carbon footprint should being rewarded through good publicity.