Title: Overview of cold chain development in China and methods of studying its environmental impacts
Abstract
The cold chain (refrigerated supply chain) is an important application of refrigeration technologies. The capacity of the cold chain industry is growing rapidly in emerging economies such as China, leading to significant environmental impacts, especially greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. By conducting the literature review, this study begins with presenting a comprehensive overview of the cold chain industry in China. We observed that China has a large total cold warehouse capacity but low capacity per capita. Then, we directly link the example of the cold chain in China to the methods of evaluating the GHG emissions from the cold chain industry. It is observed that existing studies either primarily focus on the lifecycle of food with less consideration on the cold chain facilities or primarily focus on the lifetime of a certain stage of the cold chain (e.g., refrigerated transportation) with less consideration on food. Neither frameworks capture the entire cold chain system. Moreover, we argue that existing studies lack investigations of the cold chain GHG emissions on the national scale. To evaluate the overall GHG emissions, we recommended that one can use the bottom-up approach. First, use the lifecycle assessment (LCA) to estimate the single-unit level (e.g., one kg food, one particular refrigerated warehouse) cold chain emissions. Second, aggregate up to the national scale by the distribution patterns of the cold chain networks. Finally, we identify the crucial future issues regarding collecting cold chain lifecycle inventory data, investigating the cold chain network and the overall environmental impacts in China, regulation and technology needs for expanding the clean refrigeration technologies, and the implications of the cold chain development to water, land, and society.
Dong, Yabin; Coleman, Marney; Miller, Shelie A.(
, Annual Review of Environment and Resources)
null
(Ed.)
Air conditioning and refrigeration services are increasing rapidly in developing countries due to improved living standards. The cooling services industry is currently responsible for nearly 15% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, so it is critical to investigate how the expansion of cooling services will impact future GHG emissions. In this article, we first examine the current status and expected expansion of cooling services worldwide and the associated GHG emissions. Then, we review potential improvements and innovations that could reduce future GHG emissions. Three approaches to reduce GHG emissions within the cooling sector include converting to alternative refrigerants, improving energy efficiency, and moving toward a lower-carbon electricity grid. In addition, we identify eight interventions that apply to the built environment or the food supply chain that would lead to additional GHG reductions in the cooling sector. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 46 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Wang, Junren; Karakoc, Deniz Berfin; Konar, Megan(
, Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability)
Abstract The food system is an important contributor to carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions. The refrigerated food supply chain is an energy-intensive, nutritious and high-value part of the food system, making it particularly important to consider. In this study, we develop a novel model of cold chain food flows between counties in the United States. Specifically, we estimate truck transport via roadways of meat and prepared foodstuffs for the year 2017. We use the roadway travel distance in our model framework rather than the haversine distance between two locations to improve the estimate for long-haul freight with a temperature-controlled system. This enables us to more accurately calculate the truck fuel consumption and CO 2 emissions related to cold chain food transport. We find that the cold chain transport of meat emitted 8.4 × 10 6 t CO 2 yr −1 and that of prepared foodstuffs emitted 14.5 × 10 6 t CO 2 yr −1 , which is in line with other studies. Meat has a longer average refrigerated transport distance, resulting in higher transport CO 2 emissions per kg than processed foodstuffs. We also find that CO 2 emissions from cold chain food transport are not projected to significantly increase under the temperatures projected to occur with climate change in 2045. These county-level cold chain food flows could be used to inform infrastructure investment, supply chain decision-making and environmental footprint studies.
Growing global food demands place major strains on water resources, including quality impairments and increased water scarcity. Drawing on the largely separate bodies of literature on externalities and technological innovation, this article develops a dynamic framework to explore the long‐term impacts of alternative policy approaches to the agricultural impacts on water resources. Environmental policies, which focus on correcting environmental externalities, lead to an overall gain because costs to farmers are more than offset by reduced environmental damages. Technology policies, which direct public investments into agricultural eco‐innovations, lead to benefits for farmers as well as the environment. Joint implementation of both types of policies leads to the largest overall gain. In principle, a technology policy alone could have greater environmental benefits than an environmental policy alone. This outcome is most likely in cases where the productivity effect of new technology is large and the cost of research is low.
Recommendations for research managers
As an alternative to traditional environmental policy, investments in research can provide win–win solutions that benefit the environment and agricultural producers.
Conceivably, eco‐innovations could lead to environmental conditions that are better than those achieved by environmental policy alone.
Adding research investments to existing environmental policy would lead to further improvements in environmental quality while also benefitting farmers.
Unlike environmental policies that are perceived to impose costs on agriculture, technology policies impart benefits to farmers and are less likely to face political opposition from industry.
Technology policies are likely to be the most effective when eco‐innovation leads to technologies that meaningfully reduce environmental impacts and also raise farm productivity.
Gomez, Michael; Grady, Caitlin(
, Environmental Research Letters)
Abstract
Global food systems must be a part of strategies for greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation, optimal water use, and nitrogen pollution reduction. Insights from research in these areas can inform policies to build sustainable food systems yet limited work has been done to build understanding around whether or not sustainability efforts compete with supply chain resilience. This study explores the interplay between food supply resilience and environmental impacts in US cities, within the context of global food systems’ contributions to GHG emissions, water use, and nitrogen pollution. Utilizing county-level agricultural data, we assess the water use, GHG emissions, and nitrogen losses of urban food systems across the US, and juxtapose these against food supply resilience, represented by supply chain diversity. Our results highlight that supply chain resilience and sustainability can simultaneously exist and are not necessarily in competition with each other. We also found a significant per capita footprint in the environmental domains across Southern cities, specifically those along the Gulf Coast and southern Great Plains. Food supply chain resilience scores ranged from 0.18 to 0.69, with lower scores in the southwest and Great Plains, while northeastern and Midwestern regions demonstrated higher resilience. We found several cities with high supply chain resilience and moderate or low environmental impacts as well as areas with high impacts and low resilience. This study provides insights into potential trade-offs and opportunities for creating sustainable urban food systems in the US, underscoring the need for strategies that consider both resilience and environmental implications.
Minx, Jan C.; Lamb, William F.; Andrew, Robbie M.; Canadell, Josep G.; Crippa, Monica; Döbbeling, Niklas; Forster, Piers M.; Guizzardi, Diego; Olivier, Jos; Peters, Glen P.; et al(
, Earth System Science Data)
Abstract. To track progress towards keeping global warming well below 2 ∘C or even 1.5 ∘C, as agreed in the Paris Agreement, comprehensiveup-to-date and reliable information on anthropogenic emissions and removalsof greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is required. Here we compile a new synthetic dataset on anthropogenic GHG emissions for 1970–2018 with afast-track extension to 2019. Our dataset is global in coverage and includesCO2 emissions, CH4 emissions, N2O emissions, as well as those from fluorinated gases (F-gases: HFCs, PFCs, SF6, NF3) andprovides country and sector details. We build this dataset from the version 6 release of the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR v6) and three bookkeeping models for CO2 emissions from land use,land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF). We assess the uncertainties of global greenhouse gases at the 90 % confidence interval (5th–95thpercentile range) by combining statistical analysis and comparisons ofglobal emissions inventories and top-down atmospheric measurements with anexpert judgement informed by the relevant scientific literature. We identifyimportant data gaps for F-gas emissions. The agreement between our bottom-up inventory estimates and top-downatmospheric-based emissions estimates is relatively close for some F-gasspecies (∼ 10 % or less), but estimates can differ by an order of magnitude or more for others. Our aggregated F-gas estimate is about 10 % lower than top-down estimates in recent years. However, emissions from excluded F-gas species such aschlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) or hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) arecumulatively larger than the sum of the reported species. Using globalwarming potential values with a 100-year time horizon from the Sixth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),global GHG emissions in 2018 amounted to 58 ± 6.1 GtCO2 eq.consisting of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion and industry (FFI) 38 ± 3.0 GtCO2, CO2-LULUCF 5.7 ± 4.0 GtCO2, CH4 10 ± 3.1 GtCO2 eq., N2O2.6 ± 1.6 GtCO2 eq., and F-gases 1.3 ± 0.40 GtCO2 eq. Initial estimates suggest further growth of 1.3 GtCO2 eq. in GHG emissions to reach 59 ± 6.6 GtCO2 eq. by 2019. Our analysis ofglobal trends in anthropogenic GHG emissions over the past 5 decades (1970–2018) highlights a pattern of varied but sustained emissions growth. There is high confidence that global anthropogenic GHG emissions haveincreased every decade, and emissions growth has been persistent across the different (groups of) gases. There is also high confidence that globalanthropogenic GHG emissions levels were higher in 2009–2018 than in any previous decade and that GHG emissions levels grew throughout the most recent decade. While the average annual GHG emissions growth rate slowed between2009 and 2018 (1.2 % yr−1) compared to 2000–2009 (2.4 % yr−1), the absolute increase in average annual GHG emissions by decade was neverlarger than between 2000–2009 and 2009–2018. Our analysis further revealsthat there are no global sectors that show sustained reductions in GHGemissions. There are a number of countries that have reduced GHG emissionsover the past decade, but these reductions are comparatively modest andoutgrown by much larger emissions growth in some developing countries suchas China, India, and Indonesia. There is a need to further develop independent, robust, and timely emissions estimates across all gases. As such, tracking progress in climate policy requires substantial investmentsin independent GHG emissions accounting and monitoring as well as in national and international statistical infrastructures. The data associatedwith this article (Minx et al., 2021) can be found at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5566761.
Dong, Yabin, Xu, Ming, and Miller, Shelie A. Overview of cold chain development in China and methods of studying its environmental impacts. Environmental Research Communications 2.12 Web. doi:10.1088/2515-7620/abd622.
Dong, Yabin, Xu, Ming, & Miller, Shelie A. Overview of cold chain development in China and methods of studying its environmental impacts. Environmental Research Communications, 2 (12). https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/abd622
Dong, Yabin, Xu, Ming, and Miller, Shelie A.
"Overview of cold chain development in China and methods of studying its environmental impacts". Environmental Research Communications 2 (12). Country unknown/Code not available: IOP Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/abd622.https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10209114.
@article{osti_10209114,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Overview of cold chain development in China and methods of studying its environmental impacts},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10209114},
DOI = {10.1088/2515-7620/abd622},
abstractNote = {Abstract The cold chain (refrigerated supply chain) is an important application of refrigeration technologies. The capacity of the cold chain industry is growing rapidly in emerging economies such as China, leading to significant environmental impacts, especially greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. By conducting the literature review, this study begins with presenting a comprehensive overview of the cold chain industry in China. We observed that China has a large total cold warehouse capacity but low capacity per capita. Then, we directly link the example of the cold chain in China to the methods of evaluating the GHG emissions from the cold chain industry. It is observed that existing studies either primarily focus on the lifecycle of food with less consideration on the cold chain facilities or primarily focus on the lifetime of a certain stage of the cold chain (e.g., refrigerated transportation) with less consideration on food. Neither frameworks capture the entire cold chain system. Moreover, we argue that existing studies lack investigations of the cold chain GHG emissions on the national scale. To evaluate the overall GHG emissions, we recommended that one can use the bottom-up approach. First, use the lifecycle assessment (LCA) to estimate the single-unit level (e.g., one kg food, one particular refrigerated warehouse) cold chain emissions. Second, aggregate up to the national scale by the distribution patterns of the cold chain networks. Finally, we identify the crucial future issues regarding collecting cold chain lifecycle inventory data, investigating the cold chain network and the overall environmental impacts in China, regulation and technology needs for expanding the clean refrigeration technologies, and the implications of the cold chain development to water, land, and society.},
journal = {Environmental Research Communications},
volume = {2},
number = {12},
publisher = {IOP Publishing},
author = {Dong, Yabin and Xu, Ming and Miller, Shelie A.},
}
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