Atmospheric Emissions of Short Sea Shipping Compared to Road Transport Through the Peaks and Troughs of Short-Term Market Cycles

Abstract

The comparative superiority of shipping services with respect to atmospheric emissions per ton-km is beyond debate in the case of deep sea and bulk operations. The case for short sea shipping in a setting with small consignments and frequent port-calls needs to be demonstrated relative to road transport alternatives, in particular when cargo markets are fluctuating. The empirical part of this article is based on detailed shipment-level data from a current European short sea operation and data from engine reports on actual fuel consumption. The dataset enables the construction of a high-quality origin–destination matrix of pallet-based shipments. A contrafactual case of an alternative trucking operation serving this comprehensive set of shipments is constructed, and CO₂ equivalent emissions to air are calculated and analysed under different scenarios. This comparative analysis illustrates just how efficient a modern short sea shipping operation needs to be in order to compete with road transport with respect to air emissions. The analysis suggests that such a pallet-based short sea shipping operation may be superior to trucking alternatives when it comes to carbon emissions under given circumstances, but not always.

Keywords:

• atmospheric emissions
• short sea shipping
• road transport
• market cycles
• comparative analysis

Acknowledgements

A preliminary version of this article, comprising data from a single round trip only was presented at ECONSHIP 2011 at Chios, Greece. A further developed version was presented at IAME 2013 in Marseille, France. I would like to offer my sincere thanks to the reviewers of this paper for very helpful comments, which I have tried to respond to as best I can.