Emissions regulation overview for transport operators
A sourced summary: Vietnam's Law on Environmental Protection 2020, Decrees 06 and 119, the inventory list, the carbon market timeline, CBAM, Directive (EU) 2024/825, CSRD and ISO 14083. Explanatory, not legal advice.
Why a transport operator should follow these rules
Most emissions regulation places no direct obligation on a carrier or a logistics company. It arrives through customers: shippers must inventory and report emissions across their supply chain, and transport is part of that chain. The first thing a shipper asks for is not an emissions figure but the operating data needed to compute one.
Vietnam
The document covers the Law on Environmental Protection 2020 (Article 91 on mitigation, Article 139 on the carbon market), Decree 06/2022/ND-CP and its amendment Decree 119/2025/ND-CP, the list of facilities required to run a greenhouse gas inventory under Decision 13/2024/QD-TTg with its own transport annex, the carbon market timeline under Decision 232/QD-TTg (pilot from June 2025, full operation from 2029), the COP26 net-zero commitment and Decision 876/QD-TTg for the transport sector, noting that a draft replacement for Decision 876 is out for consultation.
European Union
CBAM (Regulation (EU) 2023/956) applies to goods, not to transport services; the definitive period started on 1 January 2026 and the obligation sits with the EU importer. Directive (EU) 2024/825, applying from 27 September 2026, adds unsubstantiated generic environmental claims to the list of practices that are always unfair; the maximum fine of at least 4% of annual turnover comes from Directive (EU) 2019/2161, not from the stalled Green Claims proposal. CSRD and ESRS E1 are why shippers ask carriers for per-shipment data.
Calculation standards and the data to start recording now
ISO 14083:2023 and the GLEC Framework version 3 are the standards for transport emissions accounting. A per-shipment calculation needs four groups of data: distance, cargo weight, fuel or energy, and load utilisation. Three of the four are plain operating data: an operator that records trips, kilometres and cargo per route consistently can answer a shipper's question before computing any emissions figure. Sources were last checked on 21 September 2026; read the original texts at the links in the document before acting on them.