Abstract
Logistics operations are energy-consuming and impact the environment negatively. Improving energy efficiency in logistics is crucial for environmental sustainability and can be achieved by increasing the utilisation of capacity. This paper takes an interactive approach to capacity utilisation, to contribute to sustainable freight transport and logistics, by identifying its causes and mitigations. From literature, a conceptual framework was developed to highlight different system levels in the logistics system, in which the energy efficiency improvement potential can be found and that are summarised in the categories activities, actors, and areas. Through semi-structured interviews with representatives of nine companies, empirical data was collected to validate the framework of the causes of the unutilised capacity and proposed mitigations. The results suggest that activities, such as inflexibilities and limited information sharing as well as actors’ over-delivery of logistics services, incorrect price setting, and sales campaigns can cause unutilised capacity, and that problem areas include i.a. poor integration of reversed logistics and the last mile. The paper contributes by categorising causes of unutilised capacity and linking them to mitigations in a framework, providing a critical view towards fill rates, highlighting the need for a standardised approach to measure environmental impact that enables comparison between companies and underlining that costs are not an appropriate indicator for measuring environmental impact.
Highlights
Actors in logistics and freight transport face increased pressure to reduce the climate impact of their operations and to become more environmentally sustainable
To identify and conceptualise the causes of the unutilised capacity in the logistics system that created inefficiencies, the data were structured around the categories and system levels
The activities refer to what causes unutilised capacity in the logistics system and increases the energy consumption
Summary
Actors in logistics and freight transport face increased pressure to reduce the climate impact of their operations and to become more environmentally sustainable. EU member countries committed to reducing GHG emissions in the transport sector by at least 60 percent by 2050 compared to 1990. A significant objective to increase environmental sustainability is the reduction of energy consumption in the freight transport sector [2]. Energy-efficient freight transport needs to be approached in its wider system that is, the logistics system. To radically decrease the energy consumption from transport, technological advances alone will not be enough; the task requires changes in behaviour and structure of the logistics system [8,9], as well as inclusion of the end-consumer in a wider and extended system [10]
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