Decarbonizing intraregional freight systems with a focus on modal shift

Road freight transportation accounts for around 7% of total world energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. With the appropriate incentives, energy savings and emissions reductions can be achieved by shifting freight to rail or water modes, both of which are far more efficient than road. We briefly i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental research letters 2018, Vol.13 (8), p.83001
Main Authors: Kaack, Lynn H, Vaishnav, Parth, Morgan, M Granger, Azevedo, Inês L, Rai, Srijana
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide emissions
climate change
decarbonization
Developing countries
Emissions
Energy conservation
freight
Freight transportation
Incentives
Infrastructure
Intermodal
Intermodal transportation
LDCs
modal shift
Policies
rail freight
Roads
transportation
Transportation corridors
Transportation industry
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Summary:Road freight transportation accounts for around 7% of total world energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. With the appropriate incentives, energy savings and emissions reductions can be achieved by shifting freight to rail or water modes, both of which are far more efficient than road. We briefly introduce five general strategies for decarbonizing freight transportation, and then focus on the literature and data relevant to estimating the global decarbonization potential through modal shift. We compare freight activity (in tonne-km) by mode for every country where data are available. We also describe major intraregional freight corridors, their modal structure, and their infrastructure needs. We find that the current world road and rail modal split is around 60:40. Most countries are experiencing strong growth in road freight and a shift from rail to road. Rail intermodal transportation holds great potential for replacing carbon-intense and fast-growing road freight, but it is essential to have a targeted design of freight systems, particularly in developing countries. Modal shift can be promoted by policies targeting infrastructure investments and internalizing external costs of road freight, but we find that not many countries have such policies in place. We identify research needs for decarbonizing the freight transportation sector both through improvements in the efficiency of individual modes and through new physical and institutional infrastructure that can support modal shift.
ISSN:1748-9326
1748-9326
DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/aad56c