Green corridors and their possible impact on the European supply chain

The purpose of this chapter is to present the concept of green corridors and analyse their possible impact on the supply chain. The basis of this material is work conducted in the context of the EU SuperGreen project and therefore the geographical setting of the chapter is Europe. The general objective of the SuperGreen project has been to support the development of sustainable transport networks by fulfilling requirements covering environmental, technical, economic, social and spatial planning aspects. The chapter deals only with surface freight transport, including maritime transport, noting however that the quality of transport and logistics services is also affected by passenger transport competing for route capacity. Aviation is outside the scope of our analysis, as is the use of pipelines for liquid cargoes. In addition, the chapter provides examples of the corridor development approaches employed in Europe, and describes the performance monitoring methodology developed by SuperGreen. The deep sea service linking China to Europe is compared to the trans-Siberian rail link between Beijing and Duisburg as an example. Finally, the new transport infrastructure policy of the European Union is reviewed to investigate the relationship between green corridors and the recently introduced concept of TEN-T core network corridors in order to derive implications for corridor governance.