Sustainability has progressed beyond intent, and 2026 will be the year it becomes embedded in the day-to-day reality of logistics.
Throughout 2025, we saw businesses refine their ESG approaches and set clearer expectations for their supply chains, yet the question now is how prepared those supply chains are. We are looking at the pressures and opportunities, from the slow but steady progress of EV HGVs to the growing reliance on biofuels and carbon insetting. But most importantly, the next stage of sustainable logistics will depend on companies working together.
Crossing the line together
Businesses of all sizes have been living and breathing corporate sustainability for some time now. The reasons why we need to act have been made clear, and 2025 has seen many organisations figure out their intended approaches, evolving all aspects of ESG. There are now 78,000 companies across the UK and Europe that have either voluntary or mandatory ESG targets, in addition to 65% of UK businesses having net-zero targets.
These numbers have come from the increasing pressure of government targets, emerging commercial opportunities, and the encouraging number of companies changing their focus from revenue generation to impact mitigation. 2025 has seen this through the rapid rise in popularity of accreditations such as B Corps, SBTi, and Ecovadis. A notion further supported by the newly reviewed sustainability reporting standards across the UK and Europe.
But are we doing this together? Are SMEs as ready for the green revolution as their giant MNC counterparts? Are the delicate webs of supply chains ready to adapt to the pressures put on them by all of these targets? 2026 will be the year in which the supportive networks of ambitious first movers will be forced to adapt, giving rise to new commercial opportunities and new innovations around minimising ESG impacts.
EV HGVS to the rescue?
EV HGVs have been hallmarked as the saving grace of road logistics. This is especially the case in more developed countries, where national grids are already well established. There are great signs of R&D (Research & Design) growth in low-carbon alternatives for road freight. The UK government’s leading EV programs are the Electric Freightway and eFREIGHT 2030. These projects alone amount to a total of £112 million of investment.
These programs are great gestures in leading the movement from the front. However, this investment delivers only 230 vehicles, demonstrating the work and finance needed if we are to replace the current 600,000 diesel HGVs on UK roads today.
So, you won’t see EV HGVs on your way to work in 2026. To get there, the industry needs to work out its capacity, cost and infrastructure issues, all things I believe will be an action point until 2030. In the meantime, the road freight industry needs to push harder on biofuel options. HGV EVs will be near net-zero when they are commercially and operationally viable. Until that time, biofuels offer us some relief on carbon emissions, something that can help all companies get closer to their targets, whilst EV HGV development continues.
Ready, Inset, Go!
The practice of investing in nature-based projects to offset residual emissions has been both widely used and widely scrutinised for the last decade. Scrutiny comes from the lack of transparency between a measurable output of CO2e, evidenced in a company’s residual emission, and a seemingly immeasurable intake of CO2e in the type of projects currently available for investment. These projects are often wider ESG-based, which offsets one aspect of ESG for another. By no means is a company giving financial aid to social or environmental projects a bad thing; however, there must be a more accurate way, especially when we talk about the logistics industry.
This is where carbon insetting comes in. Carbon insetting operates under the principle of Book and Claim, meaning that a company can book the use of low-carbon fuels in a supply chain and claim the carbon profile of that fuel as a carbon credit.
2025 has seen policy around this practice develop significantly. The Smart Freight Centre’s MBM and GLEC frameworks, in tandem with the newly drafted SBTi papers, have laid out a lot of guidance and structure. It is because of these frameworks that we can demonstrate an exact measure of CO2e output and an equal measure of that output being inset in another supply chain.
The work of Book and Claim in 2025 has been a real breakthrough in beyond value chain mitigation. Companies now have a much more accurate, transparent, and relevant mechanism to handle residual emissions from their supply chains. I believe 2026 will see more and more engagement in the use of Book and Claim, as its value will be more widely recognised. As a further result, investment in carbon insetting equates to greater growth in sustainable logistics. This means more biofuel, electric, and hydrogen projects globally, which will facilitate more future opportunities for direct value chain mitigation.
Carbon footprints - take the next steps with someone else!
As someone who has been centred in sustainable logistics for several years, it has been made very apparent that there are a lot of people doing many brilliant things in this space, but they are doing them alone. Further, they’re sometimes doing them with their head down, missing opportunities for collaboration. We should be combining problems and innovations between companies and sectors, so that these projects can be solved uniformly and effectively.
Tony’s Chocoloney has recently developed its Open Chain initiative, which endeavours to improve workers’ rights throughout the supply chain of cocoa beans. The greatest part of this initiative is that Tony’s are inspiring other food groups that use cocoa to fund, promote, and take part in the initiative. On the shop shelves, Ben and Jerry’s, Tony’s or Huel may be seen as rivals. However, they have come together to solve a problem that is shared, and a problem that has been halved in the coming together of resources.
Sustainable logistics would benefit in the same fashion. We need companies working together to reduce each other’s scope 3 emissions. As voluntary targets such as B Corps increase in popularity, I believe we will see more sharing of trucks and container space. The idea could be pushed further with joint ventures on infrastructure investment. Why shouldn’t neighbouring businesses contribute towards a shared EV HGV charger? I believe more questions like this will be asked of companies in 2026.
Concluding thoughts
2026 is the year for companies of all sizes to stop waiting around for further innovation or government policy. There are many available ways to begin corporate sustainability. I see the popularity of voluntary targets increasing even further, and collaboration between the companies that set them to grow as a result.
Ready to start your sustainability journey?
At Baxter Freight, we make it simple to start your journey and provide meaningful strategies to keep your business moving more sustainably. Our Sustainable Freight Network helps you report your emissions with confidence, reduce through smarter supply chain decisions and remove what you cannot avoid.
Whether you’re responding to supply chain pressure or reporting for your own improvement, we’ll help you make credible, measurable progress with carbon-smart logistics.
Our team of experts is dedicated to guiding you every step of the way. We understand that sustainability can seem overwhelming, but we break it down into manageable actions.
Ready to take the next step? Contact our team today, and let’s make your business better with carbon-smart logistics.
