With Maritime Delays, Retailers Turn to the Skies (And That’s a Problem for Global Emissions)
The global port congestion is creating major shipping delays across several industries. Due to the sheer pressure, this is putting retailers to deliver goods. Everyone is getting extremely desperate. As the holiday season approaches, retailers need to act quickly and get their goods on their physical and virtual store shelves as soon as possible.
Due to this, most shippers have started shifting their goods from ocean to air transportation. But this expensive ocean-to-air shift has ripple effects, including environmental ones. Moving freight via the ocean is much more efficient in greenhouse gas emissions than moving it via aircraft.
What is This Increased Air Transportation Doing?
The current disruptions facing shippers are unfortunate, especially when backlogs and delays shift freight to modes with higher emissions. Switching from ocean to airfreight can increase absolute emissions by more than 20x per ton-mile.
According to Environmental Protection Agency data, for every ton of goods that is shifted from ocean vessels to aircraft, 1,249 grams of additional carbon dioxide are emitted into the atmosphere. This means moving freight 1 ton-mile via air is more than 22 times more polluting than ocean transport in carbon dioxide emissions.
Even though ocean vessels pollute a lot, the emissions related to moving 1 ton of freight 1 mile are much lower when using ocean vessels than aircraft because of the large number of cargo ships that can move at once.
What is Expected to Happen?
The large difference in price between ocean shipping and air cargo decreased dramatically this summer as container shipping prices skyrocketed. However, the limited availability of air cargo space is slowing this ocean-to-air shift down.
The International Air Transport Association recently said that air cargo grew by 7.7% in August, despite cargo space falling 1.6 points. The price per kilogram for air cargo is not a direct comparison for 40-foot containers, but the trends tell a compelling story..
