The Impact of Carbon Abatement Policies on Port Intermodal Freight Transportation Routing and Cost

Abstract

The rapid development of port intermodal freight transportation indicates the high demand for door-to-door transportation services. Satisfying such demand would bring high profits to logistics industry as well as produce great amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. The latter phenomenon is becoming the main threat to our environment. This paper developed an integrated optimization model to solve the intermodal transport routing problem. Furthermore, in order to investigate the effect of the carbon abatement policies (i.e., carbon tax and carbon credit) on optimal route, transportation cost, and carbon emissions, we adapted the original model by, respectively, considering each of the policies. Based on the illustrative example, the result shows that the carbon tax policy does not make an obvious influence on the optimal route with total and make the transportation cost increase by 1.7‰. When the carbon credit policy is conducted, the carbon emissions reduce by about 1/3 and the transportation cost increases by 9%. Meanwhile, shippers are inclined to choose railway or water transportation to abide by the carbon emission limit.