Report | 11 February 2014 | VTI-code: 33-2013
On behalf of the governmental agency Transport analysis VTI has analysed the consequences of the stricter sulphur regulations for marine fuel with the Swedish national freight transport model Samgods. The base scenario has been compared with, in total, 18 analysis scenarios developed by Transport analysis. The reason for the large amount of scenarios is the fact that both the technical and the economic development (related to the sulfur directive) is uncertain and needs to be taken into consideration. The results show that the demand for sea transports on the Swedish territory (in tonne-km) is indicated to be rather inelastic. In scenario High 1 the sea tonne-km are calculated to decrease by 0.7 billion (about 2%) due to 40–76 per cent higher sea transport costs (depending on type of ship) all other costs kept unchanged. For rail, the tonne-km are increasing maximum by 0.9 billion (about 4%). This is the case for scenario High 3 with the highest assumed increase for sea and road transports. The results for rail should be interpreted as potential increases since the model does not take into account capacity restrictions. For road, the tonne-km are calculated to decrease in Sweden with a maximum of 0.6 billion (about 2%) in the scenarios Low 3 and Low 3B. In this report changes in freight flows, tonnes per route and mode, are illustrated in maps showing the difference between the base scenario and the different analysis scenarios. For road, the overall pattern is indicating a redirection of the volumes from the ports along the Swedish east coast to ports on the Swedish west coast and to the ferry lines in the south. Finally, the results should be interpreted with caution since they are based on a test version of the Samgods model. However, we still believe that the results on an overall level seem to be reasonable.