Uncovering freight corridors’ embodied CO2 responsibilities: Evidence from the Yiwu-Ningbo corridor, China

The ability to accurately estimate and identify the hotspots (top influencing factors) of freight embodied carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is essential for introducing efficient control strategies. However, most existing studies ignore the life cycle and secondary activities of CO2 emissions in freight transportation. This research gap hinders policy makers from having a more complete understanding of hotspots, which should be focused upon to efficiently reduce CO2 emissions. Hence, a generalized framework for the complete estimation and hotspot identification of freight embodied CO2 emissions is constructed. This framework is also applicable to different regions and countries. Then, the proposed framework is applied to the Yiwu-Ningbo case, and the results indicate that: (1) the studied road transportation chain generates 9.25% higher embodied CO2 emissions than the studied rail transportation chain when transporting one container, indicating the small marginal influence of modal shift measures in terms of reducing embodied CO2 emissions. (2) Supply-side hotspots, especially the direct CO2 emissions of road transportation, should be focused upon, in order to effectively reduce embodied CO2 emissions. (3) To effectively reduce the embodied CO2 emissions of a freight corridor, the effectiveness and implementability of reduction measures should be considered in a balanced manner.