This paper attempts to provide data support and practical guidance for building low-carbon ports. Shanghai port, the largest scale and highest reputation port in China, has been chosen as a case for empirical study. This paper is divided into six parts. The first part is introduction. It introduces the background, methodology and objective of the paper. The second part includes literature review and background of low carbon ports in China. The third part is CO2 emission of multimodal transport. It introduces the method to calculate CO2 emissions of transportation and estimates the CO2 emissions of the three multimodal transport modes, road-sea, rail-sea and river-sea transport. Then, it compares the structure of multimodal transport system of seaports between China and Europe. The fourth part is empirical study of low carbon port based on the case of Shanghai port. In this part, it compares the three types of multimodal transport of Shanghai port in CO2 emissions and energy inputs. It also analyzes the
Carbon taxes on the three types of multimodal transport in Shanghai port. The fifth part is strategies to further develop multimodal transport of low-carbon ports in China. with the problems mentioned in part three and four, according to the differences of transportation networks in China coastal provinces, it employs Cluster analysis and proposes different suggestion and polices for long-term development of low-carbon port container multimodal transport in southern and northern seaports. Finally , the sixth part is the conclusion
2.literature review and background of low carbon in china
1.literature review
Although there is little research on the low-carbon ports container multimodal transport, there are considerable amount researches on green port and low-carbon economy. In the side of green port performance, the researches focus on the empirical analysis of green port abroad and in China. The major achievement is the establishment of evaluation index system of green port by using DEA. About the low-carbon economy, the urgency, necessity and feasibility of developing low-carbon economy in China has been explained and analyzed completely.
With the development of low-carbon economy , the researches on low-carbon industry are also increasing . The need of developing low-carbon agriculture was put forward firstly. However , in the literature review , previous studies have rarely involved the theoretical support of low-carbon port development , more particularly the lack of quantitative research methods . For the few typical research achievement, the fifth generation port was considered to be low-carbon port, which marked the development of low-carbon ports has to be given. And the professional research on the way of energy saving proposed that China required both sides of energy conservation and technological innovation to develop low-carbon economy. The CNECCO modal has been constructed based on energy , using the system mechanics to simulate energy metabolism in various economic sector. Besides, the relationship between each region carbon emissions, economic development, industrial structure and energy efficiency has been analyzed in quantitative method , using the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces from 1995 to 2005. It showed that there was an inverted U-curve trend between carbon emissions and economic development but a U-curve relationship between carbon emissions and energy consumption intensity
In the side of low-carbon development of multimodal transport, studies concentrate on the container rail-sea transport. The importance and necessity of rail-sea transportation to the development of low carbon ports has been explained through empirical analysis.
2. Backgrounds of Low carbon in China
In “ UK Energy White Paper ” (2003), the low-carbon is firstly defined as getting more economic output through, less natural resource consumption and less pollution. In August 2009 , titles “ Chinese Energy Technology Roadmap Until 2050”,the Chinese Academy of Sciences on the“low-carbon economy” is defined as : low-carbon economy is an economy modal that is based on the low power consumption, low pollution , low emission. The substance of low-carbon economy is efficient use of energy , development of clean energy , the pursuit of green GDP. The core is the technology innovation of energy and emission reduction, industrial structure and institutional innovation and the fundamental change of the conception of human survival.
However, the economic development of China is still at the heavy-industry-led phase of high carbon intensity in the backdrop of urbanization and industrialization. The energy endowment in China is mainly coal of high carbon intensity which brings about serious waste of energy and environmental pollution, and , therefore , is under heavy stresses of reducing the emission of CO2. According to the data of the World Bank , Energy
Conclusion
Lower CO2 emissions of the multimodal transport in Chinese ports definitely contributes to the achievement of low-carbon economy development in China as a whole. Recent years, considerable a whole . Recent years ,considerable amount researches focus on how to achieve low-carbon development in port and transportation industry . However ,most of them are theoretical supports ,there is very little quantitative study concentrating on the CO2 emissions and energy consumptions of multimodal transport in port industry. Besides, only a few researches compare the three types of multimodal transport in CO2 emissions and energy consumptions. There is hardly any research quantifies the relationship between CO2 emission reduction and the ratio of multimodal transport.
This paper attempts to provide data support and practical guidance for the low-carbon development of multimodal transport in building low-carbon ports and contribute any value for other experts to make further research on low-carbon port multimodal transport in China. Firstly, the present study quantifies CO2 emissions and energy consumptions of different transport mode. This paper makes a pairwise comparison between roadway/railway ,roadway/waterway and railway/waterway in terms of CO2 emissions, energy consumption and carbon taxes.Secomdly , the current study quantifies the relationship between CO2 emission reduction and the ratio of multimodal transport. Thirdly , considering the differences which are caused by natural factors in the transportation networks structure between northern and southern China, this paper employs Cluster Analysis to propose suggestions for the development of multimodal transport in northern and southern China. this is vital for Chinese ports to choose appropriate multimodal transport mode to reduce CO2 emissions and energy consumption, However, the existing researches do not take into account the differences in the structure of north-south traffic networks.
Trough estimation on energy consumptions, CO2 emissions and carbon taxes of different mode of transportation, the results show that railway-sea transportation mostly contributes to the low-carbon ports development ; while road-sea transportation has the largest energy consumptions and CO2 emissions. Based on the findings and the Cluster Analysis results, we propose suggestions for the selection of container multimodal transport modes of Chinese seaports,
Certainly our research still has many limitations . Firstly, the certain ratio of each transport mode of Chinese coastal provinces is not put forward. Secondly, the data used in this study did not include the analysis of origin/destination of cargo and freight routes according to final destination. The main reason for these limitation is the lack of the relevant statistics data. For example , there is lack of container transportation statistics data classified by final destination, which make it is difficult to do any analysis in this aspect. But, we will keep on focusing on these area, and attempt to solve these issues in the future research.*