CoDeZERO

Project details

Full project title: Development of a co-designed zero-carbon urban freight system

Sponsors: Decarbon8 - EPSRC

Principal Investigator:  Dr Daniela Paddeu

Project partners:

• Dr Paulus Aditjandra, Newcastle University
• Transport for the North

Start date: October 2020

Finish date: March 2021

Project summary

By 2050, 70% of the world population will live in cities. This will generate an increased number of people and freight movements in, between and intro urban areas, resulting in increased carbon emissions. Therefore, city-logistics will play a key role in reducing carbon emissions due to urban goods distribution. 

The CoDeZERO project aimed to explore stakeholders’ perspective towards freight systems in order to co-design a series of scenarios to reduce carbon emissions in the North of England, identifying potential drivers and barriers to their implementation. Stakeholder engagement is a key element to maximise the effectiveness of the co-design scenarios, as these will respond to different needs and expectations of all the parties involved (e.g. logistics/freight operators, receivers, citizens). The focus on the North is important because despite only 24% of the total UK population lives in the North, one third of UK road, rail, port and logistics activities happen in this area.

CoDeZERO was a collaboration between UWE Bristol (Dr Daniela Paddeu), Newcastle University (Dr Paulus Aditjandra) and Transport for the North, and was funded under the ‘Decarbon8 Seedcorn Fund’ initiative.

The project started with a series of workshops to shape the future of urban freight systems with freight stakeholders, which informed the design of a zero-carbon urban freight route map that was tested with freight stakeholders of the North of England. The results from the workshops were therefore used to design a system-level-solution to decarbonise urban freight based on a co-design approach. CoDeZERO represents a pilot for a larger study that will allow the North to design an integrated zero-carbon governance for transport. 

For further information, please contact Dr Daniela Paddeu (Daniela.Paddeu@uwe.ac.uk).