Limiting freight flows, still a taboo idea for the transition?

The vis­ion of the energy trans­ition of freight trans­port is very often strongly focused on tech­no­logy, which is indis­pens­able but also insuf­fi­cient and faces many obstacles. The answer to this is often to evoke the mod­al shift as the main altern­at­ive to lim­it the trans­port by heavy goods vehicles (see the pre­vi­ous art­icles in link). But the scen­ari­os also show a major poten­tial for mod­er­at­ing trans­port demand, i.e. lim­it­ing the flow of goods.

Pro­spect­ive scen­ari­os in France show very dif­fer­ent trends in trans­port demand by 2050, from about +80% to almost ‑50% depend­ing on the scen­ario (see first art­icle). Depend­ing on the path taken, the chal­lenges in terms of logist­ics or resource and energy con­sump­tion will vary greatly. The same is true in terms of the effect of this factor on the evol­u­tion of emissions.

Thus, the poten­tial of mod­al shift will be lim­ited without a more glob­al recon­sid­er­a­tion of the volumes and organ­isa­tion of logist­ics flows. On the con­trary, its mod­al share will be able to increase all the more if total demand is not grow­ing strongly, if road trans­port is dis­ad­vant­aged, and if the mod­al shift policy is part of a glob­al evol­u­tion con­sist­ent with region­al plan­ning, indus­tri­al policy and the evol­u­tion of logist­ics chains (see 3rd art­icle).

The tech­no­lo­gic­al options for decar­bon­isa­tion are also con­fron­ted with con­straints on avail­able resources, wheth­er bio­mass (bio­gas, agro­fuels), elec­tri­city and/or metals (elec­tri­city, hydro­gen). Redu­cing traffic will lim­it these con­straints and facil­it­ate the exit from fossil fuels, which dom­in­ate today for liquid and gaseous fuels (meth­ane) and for the pro­duc­tion of hydro­gen (see 2nd art­icle).

The fin­an­cial cost of the trans­ition will also be reduced, both in terms of invest­ment costs in infra­struc­ture (logist­ics, trans­port, energy, etc.), the cost of renew­ing vehicle fleets and the cost of pro­du­cing energy.

Finally, lim­it­ing freight traffic will sim­ul­tan­eously reduce many of the extern­al­it­ies of trans­port: con­ges­tion, wear and tear on infra­struc­ture, air and noise pol­lu­tion, acci­dents, the need for logist­ics space, and pol­lu­tion linked to the extrac­tion of resources.

The way to count the trans­port demand factor is the tonne​.km (which cor­res­ponds to 1 tonne moved over 1 km). Domest­ic freight trans­port in France cor­res­ponds to about 330 bil­lion t.km, or about 14 t.km per day and per per­son (or 100 kg over 140 km, for example)¹.

We can men­tion 3 ways to mod­er­ate this demand for freight:

• Reduce the tons to be trans­por­ted, by sobri­ety in the mater­i­al con­sump­tion of the economy;
• Redu­cing the num­ber of kilo­metres trav­elled, by relo­cat­ing the eco­nomy in order to reduce trans­port distances;
• Reduce the num­ber of inter­me­di­ar­ies between extrac­tion and ini­tial pro­duc­tion, then the final con­sumer or delivery.

To take some examples accord­ing to the type of goods:

• In agri­cul­ture and food, these three levers can be used in the trans­ition, by lim­it­ing food waste (lower tons), more loc­al food (lower dis­tances), and the devel­op­ment of short cir­cuits (reduc­tion of intermediaries);
• For con­struc­tion mater­i­als, which rep­res­ent large volumes but over fairly lim­ited dis­tances, the volume reduc­tions could be sig­ni­fic­ant through the reduc­tion of new con­struc­tion due to demo­graph­ic changes, through rehab­il­it­a­tion and renov­a­tion rather than new con­struc­tion, or through the con­struc­tion of col­lect­ive rather than indi­vidu­al housing;
• In industry or for man­u­fac­tured goods, this depends more glob­ally on the evol­u­tion of indus­tri­al policy, as well as on the sobri­ety and struc­ture of con­sump­tion. This will have an impact on domest­ic flows but also on inter­na­tion­al flows, giv­en the import­ance of imports of con­sumer goods;
• Finally, in the energy sec­tor, about one third of the ton­nages handled in French ports are hydro­car­bons (oil and gas)². These flows are expec­ted to decrease sig­ni­fic­antly if the energy trans­ition is suc­cess­ful, without being com­pensated in com­par­able pro­por­tions by replace­ment means (energy, metals, renew­able energy pro­duc­tion means, bat­ter­ies, etc.).

Unlike the tech­no­lo­gic­al and mod­al shift levers, which are largely based on changes with­in the logist­ics sec­tor, mod­er­at­ing trans­port demand depends largely and even essen­tially on changes in oth­er sec­tors of the eco­nomy. As always, and even more so in this case, the trans­ition must there­fore be looked at in a suf­fi­ciently broad man­ner to ensure that rel­ev­ant devel­op­ments are sought. Many of the devel­op­ments linked to the eco­lo­gic­al trans­ition are in line with the mod­er­a­tion of demand (as men­tioned above). 

How­ever, there are three poten­tial risks to be con­sidered to ensure that the object­ive of demand mod­er­a­tion is not achieved at the expense of oth­er vir­tu­ous developments:

• As freight trans­port flows are by nature inter­act­ing with the dif­fer­ent sec­tors of the eco­nomy, there may be an increase in flows for cer­tain types of mater­i­als or sec­tors in the trans­ition, for example for metals, bio­mass, or the flows needed to imple­ment a more cir­cu­lar eco­nomy. These flows will often be lower than with the cur­rent fossil eco­nomy and will have to be ration­al­ised but should not be neg­lected in the transition.
• Also, rein­dus­tri­al­isa­tion in France will have the effect of lim­it­ing cer­tain inter­na­tion­al flows (mari­time in par­tic­u­lar) but may on the con­trary increase cer­tain flows with­in France. Thus, relo­cat­ing cer­tain stages of pro­duc­tion of indus­tri­al products and con­sumer goods will bring more tons​.km than just ensur­ing the final deliv­ery to con­sumers from ports or borders.
• Finally, we must be care­ful not to demas­sify logist­ics with the reduc­tion of dis­tances and volumes. In fact, high volumes over long dis­tances favor high­er-capa­city trucks and/or mod­al shift to river or rail. Without this pre­cau­tion, the slight­est optim­iz­a­tion of flows may in some cases more than off­set the bene­fits of demand moderation.

The evol­u­tion of freight trans­port demand will be a determ­in­ing factor in achiev­ing the decar­bon­isa­tion object­ives, in a con­text of dif­fi­culties and strong iner­tia in the oth­er levers. It is all the more neces­sary to move towards the scen­ari­os with the low­est freight flows, since the changes envis­aged in the future are very dif­fer­ent: a factor of 3.5 between an almost two­fold reduc­tion and an increase of up to 80%, depend­ing on the scenario.

Although cer­tain risks are to be anti­cip­ated, this evol­u­tion is glob­ally con­sist­ent with an eco­nomy that seeks great­er sobri­ety and a cer­tain relo­ca­tion of pro­duct­ive activ­it­ies. In view of the little interest so far in these devel­op­ments, but also of the com­plex­ity of the sub­ject, it is neces­sary to focus more on this major lever.