The comparative CO2 efficiency of short sea container transport

Abstract

European transport policies have over the last decades advocated the CO2 efficiency of maritime transport relative to road haulage, and consequently, shipping reaping the benefits of being considered the green mode of freight transport. To date, research focusing on CO2 emissions from ships has to a great extent followed a modeling approach, based on a set of more or less well-founded assumptions. Yet these presumptions raise questions regarding the reliability of the emission results presented and the foundation of which transport policies are built upon. In an attempt to broaden the discussion, this paper presents CO2 emissions that have been calculated based on data from actual container feeder operations in Europe over a full year of service. Through the development of origin-destination matrices representing these real container flows, a mode-comparative analysis of CO2 efficiency is undertaken by constructing a counterfactual road transport alternative serving the same market. Although the results generally corroborate the environmental superiority of short sea container shipping with respect to CO2 efficiency, the comparative edge seems to be marginal in some scenarios. Thus, highlighting the need for shipping services to obtain a fairly high capacity utilization in order to still represent the green mode of transport in terms of CO2 emissions.