Identifying a Country’s Freight Transport-Intensive Economic Sectors and Their Logistics Emissions—Method Development and Exemplary Evaluation with Austria

Abstract

It is unequivocal that global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced drastically. One opportunity to quickly achieve deep emission reductions is by investigating the largest emitters first. This can be based on countries but also on the underlying sectors of local economies. Focusing on the latter, the transport and industry sectors stand out, as well as their overlap, which is reflected in the emissions from freight transport. To enable legislators and researchers to focus on the major emitters in freight transport and to develop tailored sectoral measures, we present a method to identify the transport-intensive sectors of a country. A two-part approach thereby makes it possible to identify these sectors and their value chains and to analyze the different emission structures of companies between the sectors. This suggests the relevance of decarbonizing transport from a company’s perspective and helps to understand the entrenched situation. Finally, the methodology is applied to the Austrian transport industry as an example to demonstrate its applicability. As applied research in this area has lagged somewhat, our results can provide managers in transport-intensive economic sectors with new motivation to decarbonize logistics, as well as guide policymakers and researchers on which sectors to focus first.