Joint Optimal Production Planning in Supply Chains under Diverse Low-Carbon Policies

Abstract

This paper studies the impact of diverse carbon emission regulations on optimal operation decisions by exploiting the economic production lot model of a multi-manufacturer system in a low-carbon environment. The optimal production planning for multiple enterprises in terms of cost optimization and carbon emission optimization are presented in various scenarios of the fully decentralized system under carbon taxation, cap and trade, and mandatory carbon cap. We prove a unified framework for modeling the scenarios enabled by carbon tax and cap-and-trade policies. Furthermore, the decision vector of the optimal production lot is obtained by analyzing the joint decision scenario based on shared carbon emission caps. We give a comparative analysis of two settings of fully decentralized and carbon quota sharing. The results show that the decision of joint production and stock preparation can reduce the total operational costs of the multi-enterprise system, but the realized carbon emissions may not change or only increase slightly. Our study provides a useful reference for government carbon emission regulation and enterprise operation decision optimization under carbon neutrality and a carbon peak environment.