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D ue to the growing concern over environmental issues, regardless of whether companies are going to voluntarily incorporate green policies in practice, or will be forced to do so in the context of new legislation, change is foreseen in the future of transportation management. Assigning and scheduling vehicles to service a pre-determined set of clients is a common distribution problem. Accounting for time-dependent travel times between customers, we present a model that considers travel time, fuel, and CO 2 emissions costs. Specifically, we propose a framework for modeling CO 2 emissions in a time-dependent vehicle routing context. The model is solved via a tabu search procedure. As the amount of CO 2 emissions is correlated with vehicle speed, our model considers limiting vehicle speed as part of the optimization. The emissions per kilometer as a function of speed are minimized at a unique speed. However, we show that in a timedependent environment this speed is sub-optimal in terms of total emissions. This occurs if vehicles are able to avoid running into congestion periods where they incur high emissions. Clearly, considering this trade-off in the vehicle routing problem has great practical potential. In the same line, we construct bounds on the total amount of emissions to be saved by making use of the standard VRP solutions. As fuel consumption is correlated with CO 2 emissions, we show that reducing emissions leads to reducing costs. For a number of experimental settings, we show that limiting vehicle speeds is desired from a total cost perspective. This namely stems from the trade-off between fuel and travel time costs.

Since the mid-2000s, electric vehicles have gained popularity in several countries even though their market share is still relatively low. However, most gains have been made in the area of passenger vehicles and most technical and scientific studies have been devoted to this case. By contrast, the potential of electric vehicular technology for goods distribution has received less attention. The issues related to the use of electric vehicles for goods distribution reveal a wide range of relevant research problems. The aims of this survey paper are to provide transportation researchers an overview of the technological and marketing background needed to conduct research in this area, to present a survey of the existing research in this field, and to offer perspectives for future research.

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