Road freight emission in China: From supply chain perspective

Freight emissions management has entered the deep-water zone. This study evaluated road freight emissions from supply chain perspective using China's 2007, 2010 and 2012 multiregional input-output table. For the first time, we quantified road freight emission based on sectors in China. Heavy industries, mining, agriculture and light industry contributed 71%,14%, 12% and 3% of total NO_x emissions in 2012 from production perspective. Construction was the largest consumption sector (43%) responsible for road freight emission from consumption perspective. Upstream transport and final product transport emitted 3.04 Tg (80%) and 0.77 Tg (20%) NO_x in 2012. Huge disparities of road freight emissions flows and allocation patterns were found across provinces in China in terms of resource endowments, geographical position and economic development. The road freight emission increased rapidly from 2007 to 2012, and economic growth effect outpaced emission control effect caused by emission standard upgrade and thus dominated the emission growth. The production structure and consumption pattern changes also promoted the emission growth. It is thus important to mitigate freight emissions with different strategies based on a certain sector's freight emissions features from the whole supply chain.