Decarbonizing intraregional freight systems with a focus on modal shift

Abstract

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.

Crossing Borders and Expanding Modal Shift Measures: Effects on Mode Choice and Emissions from Freight Transport in the Nordics

“…Despite this focus, modal shift objectives both in Norway and many European countries are far from being met in practice [4,5]. In fact, in most countries, road transport has been increasing (often strongly), while freight has been shifting away from rail to road.…”

“…In fact, in most countries, road transport has been increasing (often strongly), while freight has been shifting away from rail to road. Since the 1970s, rail freight's market share has for example steadily decreased throughout Europe [6][7][8], and particularly in Eastern Europe [5].…”

“…Thirdly, Eastern-European transport firms have taken over sizable shares of international road freight transport in Europe, being able to compete with driver wages below the minimum in many richer EU-countries [5]. Also this has strengthened road transports' competitive position.…”

Policy solution and game analysis for addressing the challenge of developing public–private partnership energy project

“…Spain has the most largescale PPP projects compared with the other members of the European Union [18]. Numerous PPP projects are implemented and operated successfully in India [19,20]. Portugal started a PPP wind power project and put the PPP contract out to tender to attract private capital in 2005 [21].…”

On-road freight complexities

“…Their plan is to boost the share of rail in overall road transport from 18% to 30% by 2020 as part of their climate change mitigation strategy 2 . Research has recently documented the critical role of shifting freight to low-carbon-intensity modes of transport -modal shift -in the fight against climate change 3 . But in order for policies and interventions to be really effective and support the development of a truly sustainable system, a more holistic understanding of the environmental and socio-economic complexities of freight transport is needed.…”