Eco-score transport - en

Approach

The eco-score calculation adds a correction to the base Agribalyse data in order to correct for additional transport. This should correction should favor products, which are produced near to the consumer.

Transport modes

Goods can be transported via road, rail or waterways. The transport modes are described in Eurostat report (2009).

The goods we are interested in (related to food) fall in the following NST/R categories (table 4.6, p66):

• 0/1 - cereals;
• 0/2 - potatoes, other fresh/frozen fruits and vegetables;
• 1/6 - foodstuffs and animal fodder;
• 1/7 - oil seeds and oleaginous fruits and fats;

We assume that Agribalyse takes care of the environmental impact in producing consumer ready products. This implies we are not interested in the transport of bulk raw products.

NST/R category 1/6 will be the most important category. For this category the most important transport mode is the route (table 4.7, p67).

Transport routes

We should look at the environmental impact for transporting goods between the production location and the consumption location. If both locations are known we can use the road distance between the two locations to get a good indication.

If these locations are not known, we need to use an estimation based on the information that we do have. The more unformation we have, the better the estimate will be.

No info

Without any additional info, there is not much to estimate. We know that it will be on average half the circumference of the world and probably much less. And this will also imply that the product is transported by sea and/or air.

Purchase country

If we know the country where the product was bought, we can make two assumptions:

• product is also produced in the country;
• product will be consumed in the purchase country;

We can then take an average transportation route of half the size of the country. This will also imply a route by road.

Production country

If in addition to the purchase country, we also know the production country, we can determine the route between both countries. This might involve transport by road, air or sea. Which transport means is used will also depend on the product category.

As we do not know the exact location of production or consumption, we need to use the geographic center of a country as an approximation.

Locations

If either the purchase (consumption) or production locations are known, we can perform a more detailed calculation based on the the two locations and/or geographical centers.