sustainability Article Container Sea Ports and Dry Ports: Future CO2 Emission Reduction Potential in China Weidong Li 1 , Olli-Pekka Hilmola 1,2,* and Yulia Panova 3 1 School of Economics & Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China;
[email protected] 2 LUT Kouvola, LUT University, Kouvola 45100, Finland 3 Department of E-Commerce, Luoyang Normal University, Luoyang 471934, China;
[email protected] * Correspondence: olli-pekka.hilmola@lut.fi Received: 28 January 2019; Accepted: 6 March 2019; Published: 13 March 2019 Abstract: Nowadays, China dominates logistics volumes, and its container logistics is associated with the largest sea ports, such as Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Ningbo. However, China’s coastal line is long and contains numerous million-container-handling sea ports. Current leading sea ports are located mostly in the south or at the middle point of the coastal line. Volumes are rather concentrated in these few areas. Despite the fact that China’s vast population is well-spread throughout the coastal line, major cities are also located in the hinterlands. Apart from some regions (e.g., the Pearl and the Yangtze River Delta) where there are many cities that are very close to each other, distances between cities are rather long in general. Therefore, this research examines the CO2 emission reduction potential of using a larger number of sea ports (such as distribution hubs), as well as the interaction of these with analytically chosen dry ports. Results of the hypothetical country level container transportation model, using linear integer programming concerning 51 cities (largest hinterland and container sea port cities), showed that better and more equal use of sea ports serving the major cities will result in considerable emission reductions.