Future CO2 savings from on-line shopping jeopardised by bad planning

Panel: Panel 3: Mobility and Transport

Authors:
Agneta Persson, ÅF-Energikonsult AB
Margot Bratt, City of Stockholm LIP Council

Abstract

Enormous amounts of energy are used to transport groceries and other daily household goods from producers to end-users. The share of energy use in transport is about equally divided between transport from producer to retailers and from retailers to end-users. Models show that given a smoothly operating web-shopping system at a penetration level as low as 10% of purchased daily household goods, the transport-energy consumption and CO_2-emissions can be lowered by 7%, and NOx-emissions by 10%. Should the market penetration of web-shopping reach 50% in an area, energy and CO_2 consumption should decrease by 36% and 34%, respectively, and NOx-emissions by 48%. Today in Sweden 0.8% of all daily household goods is purchased on the net.

However, bad planning in several senses jeopardise the potential savings. Some of the risks:

"Creating" a need for a second set of fridge/freezers per household for reception of goods,
Bad (distributor) logistical routines and planning,
Lack of standardisation (distribution methods, sizes of reception facilities, etc.).

The new Stockholm city district, Hammarby Sjöstad, is planned to be extremely energy-efficient and designed to stimulate environmental awareness. Ecological efficiency matters are carefully incorporated into not only new building construction logistics and future web-shopping, but for goods-delivery logistics (including planning of a local logistical centre) for the commercial and industrial life already existing in Hammarby Sjöstad. Totally new living conditions may change the consumption dynamics faster in new areas such as this (when compared to the national average) meaning that energy savings might be more easily realised here.

This paper gives a brief description of the overall savings through selected logistical solutions, and a more in-depth study of the savings foreseen through encouraging web-shopping through town planning, building design and other measures.