Green Corridors in European Surface Freight Logistics

Abstract

In the European Commission’s Freight Transport Logistics Action Plan of 2007, a number of short- to medium-term actions are presented that will help Europe address its current and future challenges, and ensure a competitive and sustainable freight transport system there. One action is the “Green transport corridors for freight”. A Green Corridor is characterized by a concentration of freight traffic between major hubs and by relatively long distances of transport. Green Corridors should in all ways be environmentally friendly, safe and efficient. Green technologies and smart utilization of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), where available, may even improve those corridors. Where not available, new R&D may be required to further develop what is needed. Given the above policy goals, project “Super Green” has been launched. This is Coordination and Support Action co-funded by the European Commission in the context of the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, and coordinated by the National Technical University of Athens. The project involves 22 partners from 13 European countries. The purpose of this chapter is to address the key issues involved in the development of Green Corridors for European Freight Logistics, describe the Super Green project, and give an overview of main results to date.

Appendix: Related Projects

The state of knowledge on emissions is immense, and so is the one on logistics. But not as much has been written on the interface between the two. The following (mostly European) logistics research projects are connected, directly or indirectly, to the objectives of SuperGreen. Pålsson et al. (2010) present further details.

“BE Logic” (www.be-logic.info) is the acronym of the “Benchmark Logistics for Co-modality” collaborative project funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme. It began on 1 September 2008 and was to last for 2.5 years. The nine partners are led by ECORYS Company. The project aims to improve efficiency of the different modes of transport, supporting the development of a quality logistics system. This is done through the benchmarking of: (a) transport policy, (b) transport chains and (c) inland and sea terminals.

“InteGRail” (Intelligent Integration of Railway Systems, www.integrail.info) was established in 2005 to address the growing demand for an efficient and integrated railway system in Europe. The project developed a method to assess performance of railways and to study the influence of changes in lower level performance indicators on the overall transport volume. The 40 project participants included railway and infrastructure companies, academic institutions, consultancies and technology providers. 11 million Euro out of a total project budget of 20 million was contributed by the European Union under FP6.

The Shipping KPI project (www.sintef.com/Projectweb/Shipping-KPI/) is based on a group of 18 leading ship-management and ship-owning companies that agreed to cooperate in establishing an international standard for Key Performance Indicators in shipping. A pilot project was initiated in January 2005 to test methodologies to measure the value of different KPIs. The pilot project was followed the “Shipping KPI Phase 1” sponsored by the research Council of Norway. The project was launched in January 2006 and ended in 2008.

The Network for Transport and Environment (NTM) is a non-profit organization that specializes in environmental performance assessment, establishing methods and data that enable credible calculations of transports’ environmental, climate and energy performance. NTM was initiated in 1993 by a variety of transport providers and buyers of transport services. NTM has developed and offers web-based calculation tools for goods and passenger transportation.

“EcoTransIT World” (www.ecotransit.org), is an upgrade development of “EcotransIT”, a project initiated in 2000 by five European railways: Railion AG (Germany), SBB (Switzerland), Green Cargo AB (Sweden), Trenitalia (Italy) and SNCF (France). New partners from Spain, Belgium and Germany have subsequently joined. EcoTransIT identifies the environmental impacts of freight transportation in terms of direct energy consumption and emissions during the operation of vehicles involved in freight transport (tank-to-wheel).

The “Calculation of external costs for goods transport” project was carried out at IVL with financial support by Vinnova, the Centre for Environmental Assessment of Products and Material (CPM) at Chalmers University and the Foundation for the Swedish Environmental Research Institute (SIVL). The member companies of CPM which co-financed the project were Schenker, Akzo Nobel, ABB and AB Volvo.

IHS Fairplay has developed “COMPASS”, an acronym for comparison tool for co-modal transport assessments. COMPASS enables the entire transport chain to be modelled in steps and activities, with each chain including as many nodes and links as required.

The NP Should cost calculator was developed internally at Procter and Gamble 2009. The tool estimates transport costs, lead times and external costs. Calculations are based on collected data, which are linked to a user-specified intermodal transport chain. The model was improved in 2010 to include other modes of transport (e.g. inland waterways).

The German company Contargo has, since 1996, developed an “Intermodal Tariff Information System” (IMTIS), which helps evaluate the best transport mode and route. The system is permanently being updated and now possesses knowledge of more than 115,000 destinations in Europe. In 2007, the calculator was extended by a new factor: the CO₂ emissions of each mode of transport.

A similar tool is GIFT, Geospatial Intermodal Freight Transportation. It enables trade-offs between economic, environmental and energy impacts of freight transportation. GIFT, developed as a joint project between the University of Delaware and Rochester Institute of Technology, has been applied e.g. on East Coast freight studies and for the Great Lakes region. In the latter, implications of policies such as a carbon tax introduction were analyzed.

PROMIT is the acronym of the “Promoting Innovative Intermodal Freight Transport” Coordination Action, funded by the EC under the 6th Framework Programme. It promotes successful logistics approaches to intermodal transport. From the SuperGreen perspective, the following four cases are the most interesting.

BRAVO: The Brenner corridor, one of the busiest European freight corridors both by road and rail, transits the sensitive Alpine region (Austria, Germany, Italy). The objective is to raise the volume of environment-friendly combined rail-road transport and increase rail’s market share along Brenner. “Action Plan Brenner 2005” contains a list of measures required to organize and ensure the short- to medium-term upgrading of the level of service provided in combined (rail-road intermodal) transport on this corridor.

RODER and AlpFRail: This supply chain case exhibits synergies between two separate developments in PROMIT. It concerns freight traffic between Turkey and Western Europe, where the previously-existing land-based routes were unattractive in respect to road distance, time, transport costs and environmental impact.

VOLVO: Recognising that Volvo’s factories are “peripheral” in relation to customers, the company perceived a distance handicap compared to other vehicle manufacturers. In practice, these factories had to pay transport costs twice, both for sourcing of materials and for the distribution of finished products. To serve the Volvo factories and DCs in Umeå, Gothenburg and elsewhere, Volvo Logistics selected a train/short sea shipping (SSS) solution. That covered Volvo’s transport needs with minimum environmental impact, by combining products (cabs) with production material.

The Viking Train: This offers a 1,735 km long link from the Baltic Sea region in Eastern Europe to the Black Sea Region (Caucasus and Turkey) in South-eastern Europe, and beyond to Central Asia. The Viking train makes use of the Pan-European corridor IX and circumvents the heavily congested western European north–south corridors, running through the countries of Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. The Viking train, as a road-SSS-rail intermodal connection improves security for long-distance trucks; reduces the disadvantage of a lack of through motorways; and enables the rebalancing of empty containers between northern and southern Europe.

PLATINA (www.naiades.info/platina/downloads) is the acronym of the “Platform for the implementation of NAIADES” project, financed by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme. The NAIADES action plan is an EC initiative to enhance the use of inland navigation as part of intermodal freight solutions, to create a sustainable European-wide transport network.

The BestLog project aimed to disseminate and promote logistics best-practice cases. Nine research institutes from as many European countries participated, establishing a basis for transport logistics decision making and reviewing trends such as the relation between growth in freight traffic and economic growth in the EU.

The Swedish “Green Corridors” initiative focuses on transport routes and collaboration among shippers, forwarders, industry and haulers to optimize the use of transport capacity. Better utilization of the transport resources will reduce the impact on the environment. The approach concerns all transport modes, and may lead to shifts from one mode to another. The project, managed by the Swedish Logistics Forum, began in 2008 and today features collaboration with the governments of Denmark, Finland and Norway. In addition, there are three international transport projects in the Baltic region, exhibiting important “greening” characteristics:

The “East–West Transport Corridor” (EWTC) project (www.eastwesttc.org/about-ewtc.aspx) was a cooperative venture between 42 different partners—local, regional and national authorities, universities, harbours and private stakeholders—in Denmark, Lithuania, Russia and Sweden. The project, begun in 2006, was co-financed by the project partners and the Interreg IIIB Baltic Sea 2000–2006 programme. EWTC aimed to strengthen the transport development through infrastructure improvements and cooperation between researchers.

The SCANDRIA project (www.scandriaproject.eu) is a cooperation of 19 partners from Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway, to develop a green and innovative transport corridor that connects capitals and metropolitan regions along the shortest path from Scandinavia to the Adriatic Sea. It is partly financed by the Baltic Sea Region Programme of the EU. Scandria fosters co-modality, rail transport and environmentally friendly solutions in road transport.

The TransBaltic project (http://transbaltic.eu/about/) is co-financed by the EU Baltic Sea Programme 2007–2013. Its overall objective is to provide regional-level incentives for creation of a comprehensive multimodal transport system in the Baltic Sea Region. This is to be achieved by means of joint transport development measures and jointly implemented business concepts.