How to improve freight transport emissions’ management?

Abstract

Background: To fight against climate change, the EU is committed to the world’s most ambitious climate and energy targets, i.e. CO2 reduction at least 20% by the year 2020 and 80-95% by 2050, in reference to 1990. This paper aims to look at the problem of freight transport emissions’ measurement and management in order to reduce CO2. The focus is on the chemical industry itself. The authors try to answer following research questions: (i) Do chemical and logistics companies in Poland measure and manage freight transport emissions? (ii) Where do they see the biggest challenges to emissions’ management and how do they address them? (iii) Is a toolbox facilitating modal shift able to increase the usage of multimodal transport by chemical and logistics companies? Methods: The research problem is investigated using a two-stage effort. Stage one is structured, in-depth interviews conducted among chemical and logistics companies operating in Poland. The results of this stage have provided the base for the toolbox developed to facilitate the modal shift in chemical transports. Stage two presents the results of the toolbox’s beta-version tests conducted among chemical companies in Poland in 2017. Results: Within the findings, the authors diagnose the obstacles which prevent companies from multimodal transport, and present toolbox consisting of: consulting services, multimodal planning guidelines, IT visualization, and CO2 calculator. The toolbox facilitates transport partners’ cooperation on shifting chemical freight from road to multimodal. Conclusions: With technological developments, which strongly influence shippers and transport providers and offer improvement opportunities in efficient transport management, the topic of freight transport emissions’ measurement and management in order to reduce CO2 should be investigated in more detail.