Evaluation of carbon emissions for fresh food last-mile delivery: A comparative analysis of two refrigeration methods

Abstract

This study compares carbon emissions from last-mile fresh food delivery using traditional cold storage plates and a new photovoltaic (PV) direct-drive cooling model. A life cycle analysis shows that while the PV model has higher initial production emissions in six cities, it achieves a 97.95–98.78 % reduction in total emissions over 20 years compared to the traditional model. The cold storage plate model contributes the highest carbon footprint during the use stage, while the photovoltaic direct-drive cooling model has the highest carbon footprint during the production stage. The emission reduction benefits could be achieved during the disposal stage. As the design temperature inside the delivery box increases from -5 °C to 0 °C, the carbon emissions of the photovoltaic direct-drive cooling model decrease by 17.74 %–19.31 %, while those of the cold storage plate model decrease by 13.21 %–18.79 % for different cities. Further increasing the temperature to 5 °C results in a more reduction of 17.03 %–18.24 % for the photovoltaic direct-drive cooling model and 15.22 %–19.71 % for the old storage plate model. This indicates that even minor adjustments in temperature settings can have a substantial impact on reducing the carbon footprint of fresh food delivery.