Scania’s Packaging Network : Analysis of the Environmental Impact of Alternative Fuels and Modalities Within the Transportation Network

Abstract: In a fast-moving world with high demand for deliveries of various goods, the need for high performing transportation systems and networks has grown rapidly. As a reaction, the number of trucks has increased, which together with other transport solutions to cover the need has caused a growth of CO2e emissions. Sustainability awareness has pushed companies to consider and implement more sustainable transportation solutions to reduce the environmental impact from transport. The purpose of this study is to analyze and identify the root causes of CO2e emissions in a transport, delivery network. An understanding of the common characteristics of transports causing the highest levels of emissions is provided with an analysis of distances, modalities and fuel types. Additionally, alternatives are simulated to compare the current network to a system with different solutions implemented. The study was performed by analyzing available literature of intermodal transportation systems, alternative fuel types and different modalities. Data for a full year was collected from Scania AB, cleaned and analyzed to identify the type of transport to study further. The characteristics were identified by forming geographical regions based on location and available infrastructure, divide the transports by legs and distances, and sort the transports by fuel types and modalities. As a result, several flows were identified as examples representing the network where the effects of making changes could be most accurately identified.Simulations were performed for exemplary flows providing results for four out of seven regions in the network. Available infrastructure for different modalities was considered for each region and alternative fuel types researched. Considering the possibilities within the regions, each flow was simulated with the available solutions in the region. Additionally, infrastructure potentially developing in the near future, was considered as an alternative in cases where current availability is limited.The results from the simulations were unambiguous for intermodal transportation systems in the cases where electric rail was utilized over any mean of truck transport, regardless of the fuel type. Road transports run on Diesel were used as the baseline for the simulations as it is the highest utilized fuel type. Simulations of road transports on alternative fuels also provided a positive result for CO2e emissions as they decreased in all cases.