In 2007, in a study for the UK Commission for Integrated Transport, I estimated CO2 emissions from freight transport in the UK using government data for 2006.  For my Decarbonising Logistics book I updated this calculation using statistics for 2016 to see how the carbon footprint of Britain’s freight transport system had changed over the intervening decade.  This short article summarises the main changes. The analysis excluded freight movement in vans as there was a lack of comparable data for 2016.  Across the other modes of freight transport (lorries, rail, shipping and inland waterways) total CO2 emissions actually fell by 18% between 2006 and 2016.  This was partly due to an 8% contraction of the total freight market, measured in tonne-kms; the remainder was attributable to a decline in the average carbon-intensity of freight movement.  The article disaggregates the carbon trends by mode.  A fuller discussion of the analysis can be found in Chapter 8 of my book.

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