Saturday, 18 April 2020

Trade transportation and the environment

a column by Rikard Forslid (Stockholm University, Sweden) for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

The transport sector is a significant greenhouse-gas emitter. Because international trade in goods requires transportation, it is regarded with some suspicion by the environmentally concerned. However, trade and transportation may actually decrease emissions if production is ‘dirtier’ than transportation.

This column uses a new ‘dirtiness index’ to capture how environmentally harmful a firm is and demonstrates how transportation can reduce global emissions if the production of transport services is cleaner than the production it substitutes. The cleaner transportation is relative to other production sectors, the higher the likelihood that transportation could lower emissions.

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Labels:
greenhouse-gas_emissions, international_transport, climate_change, emissions,


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