Optimization of Conventional and Green Vehicles Composition under Carbon Emission Cap

Md. Anisul Islam and Yuvraj Gajpal
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Md. Anisul Islam: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Room E2-327, EITC Building, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 5V6, Canada
Yuvraj Gajpal: Department of Supply Chain Management, 631-181 Freedman Crescent, Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 5V4, Canada

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 12, 1-20

Abstract: The CO 2 emission of transportation is significantly reduced by the employment of green vehicles to the existing vehicle fleet of the organizations. This paper intends to optimize the composition of conventional and green vehicles for a logistics distribution problem operating under a carbon emission cap imposed by the government. The underlying problem involves product delivery by the vehicles starting from a single depot to geographically distributed customers. The delivery occurs within specified time windows. To solve the proposed problem, we design a hybrid metaheuristic solution based on ant colony optimization (ACO) and variable neighborhood search (VNS) algorithms. Extensive computational experiments have been performed on newly generated problem instances and benchmark problem instances adopted from the literature. The proposed hybrid ACO is proven to be superior to the state-of-the-art algorithms available in the literature. We obtain 21 new best-known solutions out of 56 benchmark instances of vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). The proposed mixed fleet model obtains the best composition of conventional and green vehicles with a 6.90% reduced amount of CO 2 emissions compared to the case when the fleet consists of conventional vehicles only.

Keywords: green vehicles; CO 2 emission cap; mixed fleet of logistics problem with time window; VRPTW; ant colony optimization; hybrid metaheuristic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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