Three objectives currently feature prominently in government transport policies: to cut carbon emissions, to improve resilience and to increase connectivity. The decarbonisation of freight transport, which globally accounts for roughly 10% of CO2 emissions, is integral to national climate mitigation plans.  Supply chain failures during the pandemic showed the need for stronger government action to make freight transport systems more robust.  Increasing the connectivity of transport is seen mainly as a way of improving economic efficiency and boosting trade.

As these three policy initiatives are typically analysed and formulated separately, the interdependencies between them are often overlooked.

In a study for the International Transport Forum, partly funded by the German Federal Government, Alan McKinnon, Professor of Logistics at Kühne Logistics University and FFSC advisory board member, explored these relationships and considered their implications for public policy making.

This involved identifying a series of critical attributes for decarbonisation, resilience and connectivity, 19 in total.  Of all the possible relationships between them, he rated 35 to be the most important. These are plotted in the diagram and coloured-coded to show their classification into three categories: synergy, trade-off and hybrid (depending on local circumstances, the relationship can be either supportive or inhibiting).

The good news is that two-thirds of these relationships appear to be in the first category, suggesting that most efforts to improve connectivity and resilience and to reduce emissions should be mutually-reinforcing. Only four (11%) are likely to involve a trade-off on every occasion, while eight (23%) can be either synergistic or conflicting. In the case of these hybrid relationships, governments can often take measures to mitigate potentially adverse effects.

Here are examples of the relationships between three pairs of decarbonisation and resilience attributes:

Relationship 26: Between modal shift and intermodality

Making greater use of rail and waterborne freight modes within a logistics system generally cuts carbon emissions while distributing the freight task across more transport networks should, at least in theory, spread the risk of service disruption. The degree of risk mitigation, however, is dependent on the relative vulnerability and resilience of the lower-carbon modes.

Relationship 24: Between freight transport demand and sourcing

The shortening of supply chains is often advocated as both a risk mitigation measure and means of reducing the amount of freight movement, thereby cutting transport-related carbon emissions. There is much debate, however, over the amount of added resilience likely to accrue from reshoring and nearshoring. Much supply chain risk is country- or supplier-specific and not simply a function of the distance that products move. The carbon savings associated with more localised sourcing can also be small or non-existent, particularly when emissions from traded products are assessed on a life-cycle basis. Minimising these life-cycle emissions can involve transporting goods long distances from low-carbon production locations.

Relationship 29: Between vehicle utilisation and scheduling

Just-in-time (JIT) replenishment has been widely criticised for rendering supply chains fragile and causing the under-loading of freight vehicles. Its relaxation has been advocated as both a de-risking and a decarbonisation measure, appearing to offer alignment between resilience and environmental objectives. On closer scrutiny, however, the possible contribution to both objectives is questionable, mainly on the grounds that JIT is a whole business philosophy and not simply a freight delivery mechanism. Confining analysis to the freight transport system suggests that relaxation of JIT pressures would yield both environmental and resilience benefits. At a logistical system or supply chain level, however, the outcomes could be quite different. This illustrates the complexity of modelling interactions between freight transport policy objectives.

Source: Foundation for Future Supply Chain

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