Optimization of Thermal Coal Multimodal Transportation Considering Externalities

Abstract

China is a major electricity-consuming country which consumes a large amount of electricity resources every year. Currently, thermal power plants are the main electric power supply types in China, and the differences exist between coal production areas and coal demand areas, resulting that a lot of coal transportation activities are needed every year. The transportation of coal will cause serious dust hazards to the surrounding areas, and the transport tool also affect the environment a lot, which has strong negative externalities. It is believed that the reasonable quantification of the negative external costs incurred in thermal coal multimodal transportation and its inclusion in the total cost of thermal coal multimodal transportation is satisfied with the interests of society. Therefore, this paper establishes a multi-objective optimization model considering the external costs of thermal coal multimodal transport, and obtains the Pareto optimal solution set of the constructed model employing a improved Genetic algorithm named NSGA-II. Finally, the influence of external costs and the rationality of the inclusion of external costs are further analyzed.