Greenhouse gas emission estimation for temperature-controlled food distribution systems

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from food transportation include emissions from energy consumption and refrigerant leakage into the environment. The hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and perflourocarbons (PFCs) generated by refrigerant leakage markedly increase global warming (GW). The issue of emissions from temperature-controlled food delivery is important for carriers. This paper aims to estimate GHG emissions from the Traditional Multi-Vehicle Distribution (TMVD) and Multi-Temperature Joint Distribution (MTJD) systems by formulating mathematical models that consider delivery scheduling for time-dependent demand of multi-temperature foods. Furthermore, this paper analyzes and compares the emissions from each source in the two systems to explore the influence of delivery scheduling on emissions. The results indicate that, as compared to the TMVD system, the MTJD system yields less total emissions by lowering fuel consumption even when it generates more GHG due to refrigerant leakage and electric power consumption for freezers, which accounts for an extremely low percentage of total emissions. This paper suggests carriers should use the MTJD system to reduce routing distances and emissions simultaneously.