Title: The impact of CO₂ pricing or biodiesel on container transport in and passing through the Netherlands

Authors: Mo Zhang; Martijn Van Den Driest; Bart Wiegmans; Lorant Tavasszy

Addresses: Sustainable Transport and Logistics, TNO, P.O. Box 49, 2600 AA Delft, The Netherlands; Faculty Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5048, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands ' Faculty Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 2, 2628CD Delft, The Netherlands ' Faculty Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5048, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands ' Faculty Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5015, 2600 GA Delft, The Nederland; Sustainable Transport and Logistics, TNO, P.O. Box 49, 2600 AA Delft, The Netherlands

Abstract: The paper analyses the impact of: 1) CO₂ pricing; 2) using biodiesel on the multimodal freight transport system in and through the Netherlands taking the changes in the transport demands for road, rail, and inland waterway into account. Special attention is given to the impact on the market share of various barge classes in inland waterway transport. This paper presents the GIS-based multimodal flow estimation model which is applied in the scenario analysis to simulate, visualise, and evaluate the impacts of the tested policies. The scenario analysis shows that the impact of CO₂ pricing is limited in terms of both reducing CO₂ emissions and realising modal shift. Pricing CO₂ at €90 per ton or using biodiesel B30 (a blend of 30% biofuel and 70% diesel) would achieve similar effects on the total transport network cost increase and modal shift from road to intermodal transport. The analysis shows also that the largest class of barge (VIb) would be less cost efficient than class Va barges if the fuel costs increased by 50%, because the benefit gained by Va barges from less fuel consumption per TEU per km would be higher than the cost saving per TEU per km gained by VIb barges from the scale economy of barge size.

Keywords: intermodal transport; CO2; carbon dioxide; carbon pricing; carbon emissions; biodiesel; biofuels; container transport; geographic information systems; GIS; The Netherlands; freight transport; barge size; barges; inland waterways; multimodal flow estimation; modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTL.2014.064575

International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics, 2014 Vol.6 No.5, pp.531 - 551

Accepted: 30 Sep 2013
Published online: 13 Sep 2014 *

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