Green Innovation for Sustainable Transportation: Strategies, Technologies and Methodologies

Dear Colleagues,

The green innovation of recent years has brought to reckoning several sectors of the transportation system, but will contemporary and future innovative green technologies or solutions be as effective as we hope they will?

To drastically reduce carbon emissions by 2050, every sector of the transportation system should work together to tackle several different and incredibly challenging issues. While the sustainability of the “transport” of people and goods is a key point that decision makers must consider, the “road” to achieving our sustainability goals is not clear yet.

Different solutions are emerging, attracting the attention of decision makers and the industry:

• The adoption of electrified vehicles;
• The adoption of different levels of automation in the vehicles; and
• The adoption of different mobility paradigms.

The adoption of electrified vehicles (e.g., hybrid, plug-in hybrid, electric) in private, public, and freight transport can be a solution. These technologies have several advantages, such as the reduction of emission at local/urban level, the improvement of efficiency on board due to the better efficiency of electric components and recovery while braking, and the integration with distributed renewable energy systems for electricity production. Nevertheless, question remain—e.g., what are the real benefits? What are the best operational contexts? What are the best technologies? Which methodologies should be adopted to effectively assess the costs and the benefits?

The adoption of different levels of automation in vehicles (from human-driven to fully autonomous) may have a major impact on the consumption and emission of the entire system. Nevertheless, what will the direct/indirect cost be? How fast will the market penetration be? What will be the best technologies? What will be the transportation context be (e.g., mobility as a service)?

The adoption of different mobility paradigms (e.g., mobility as a service), activity paradigms (e.g., smart working) or different supply systems (e.g., sharing mobility, micromobility) will surely have an impact, but what will the direct cost be, and how should these paradigms be integrated into the Smart City paradigm?

Finally, is green innovation the most sustainable strategy? Does it allow addressing and achieving all the UN Sustainable Development Goals?

Overall, the interaction of such technologies with the territory system, with the social and economic system, and with the traffic system and power grid is crucial to understand, to estimate, and to determine the environmental benefits. For instance, the level of traffic, driving behavior, payload on board, and power of auxiliary systems can have a great impact on technology consumption and, consequently, on emission reduction and on the load required at the power grid. Furthermore, the way people and goods travel using different modes of transport can have a different impact in terms of carbon footprint.

Transportation systems may and should play a significant role in making communities smart, sustainable, inclusive, and secure. Indeed, it is generally agreed that green innovation for logistics and people should significantly change traditional mobility paradigms and traditional transportation planning approaches and make the transportation system more sustainable and inclusive, thus allowing the entire social and economic system to become more efficient.

The overall objective of the SI is to describe the methodological/technological state of play and to conduct an operational assessment of the complex issues regarding the role of green innovation in terms of management and optimization of the multiple components of a transportation system: users, infrastructures, technologies, and services.

The SI will address the following domains:

• Sustainable mobility;
• Smart mobility;
• Smart and sustainable logistics;
• Electrified vehicles;
• Autonomous vehicles;
• Micromobility;
• Traffic control/management;
• Vehicle control/management;
• Carbon footprint evaluation;
• Well-to-wheels analysis;
• Port operations and emissions.

Prof. Dr. Stefano De Luca
Dr. Chiara Fiori
Dr. Francesca Bruno
Guest Editors

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• green transportation
• sustainable mobility
• electric mobility
• autonomous vehicles
• smart mobility