Assessing the Environmental Impact of Freight Transportation in Multinational Supply Chains and its Sustainable Alternatives

Fulfilling global trade requirements, freight transport contributes to greenhouse gas emissions with around 8% contribution towards global CO₂ emissions. While logistical performance improvements are a global endeavor, they have sometimes been rendered ineffective in terms of proportional emission reductions. Existing studies have invariably examined freight emissions at a regional level or by transport mode; hardly any were found to integrate global freight activity with logistics performance indicators such as the World Bank's Logistics Performance Index (LPI). This research attempts to bridge this gap by integrating OECD–ITF datasets together with World Bank LPI data to analyze how logistics performance translates to freight-related CO₂ emissions across countries and transport modes. The new approach involves proposal of integrating the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) and Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) frameworks into one Sustainable Freight Framework (SFF). It finds that the strongest influence upon CO₂ emissions (β = 0.921, p < 0.001) was exerted by freight volume (TKM), while weaker influences were exerted by LPI and transport mode. Altogether, the model accounted for 84.4% of the emissions variance thus measured (R² = 0.844). While simulations in influence-based research explore such a relationship, the current paper relies on real-world data to show practical validation of the logistics performance-emissions link. Results highlight how decarbonization of supply chains can come from the integration of logistics efficiency with modal shifts and green technologies, providing key information to policymakers and sustainability professionals elsewhere.