A pathway design framework for national freight transport decarbonization strategies

Abstract

National and international freight transport emissions represent about 40% of global transport emissions, with demand expected to triple by 2050, which will increase emissions further. However, to meet the 1.5°C climate goal, a rapid decrease in transport emissions is required, along with the achievement of zero emissions as soon as possible around mid-century. Given this context, long-term low-emission national development pathways provide a strategic instrument to align short-term action with long-term objectives and to reduce national freight transport emissions. However, current transport-energy modelling studies often exclude the structural and systemic mitigation options that influence the industrial production and supply chain structure, as well as modal and logistics choices, and instead focus mainly on the technological options related to road freight vehicles and fuels. In addition, such studies lack relevant policy and stakeholder-oriented explanations of the barriers and enablers associated with these options. In this paper, we introduce a new framework to design and compare long-term national and sectoral decarbonization pathways for freight transportation, facilitating the consideration of all decarbonization options and the organization of stakeholder-oriented policy dialogues. The development of this sectoral framework builds on the general Deep Decarbonization Pathways (DDP) framework and a first implementation in France. It is then applied and tested in three emerging countries: Brazil, India and South Africa and the results show that the linking of systemic and technological changes could reduce emissions per tonne-km by at least 60%, and up to 100% by 2050, while also reducing energy consumption and supporting national development.