ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: REDUCING THE CO₂ EMISSIONS IN INTERMODAL TRANSPORT PLANNING

International shipping is still the most important transportation method. Besides the uncountable benefits, ships have a considerable role on environment. Greenhouse gas emissions is the most negative effects of freight transport and has undesirable effects on the environment. Exhaust gases are the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from ships and carbon dioxide is the most important GHG, both in terms of quantity and of global warming potential. In view of rising environmental concerns of GHG, shipping lines must also consider cutting down their carbon footprints in their strategic and tactical planning. Intermodal freight transport, where freight is shipped from origin port with gateway ports by a sequence of at least two transportation modes, offers the possibility of shifting freight (either partially or in full) from one mode to another in the hope of reducing the greenhouse emissions by appropriately scheduling the services and routing the freight. Traditional planning methods for scheduling services in an intennodal transportation network usually focus on minimizing travel or time-related costs of transport. The main objective of this paper is to find for the most favorable solution from a range of permissible solutions in terms of the criterion adopted, the lowest transport costs and the minimum emission of gases when transporting the container. The developed mathematical model is verified by the example of container transportation from Shanghai to Belgrade using four scenarios and one hypothetical model. The mathematical model gives us the possibility to observe the entire range of solutions, as well as the ability to rank them, by which a simple selection of a group of the most favorable solutions is made, while simultaneously looking at transport costs and gas emissions. The model responds to different customer requirements as some require lower transport costs, while others are focused on minimizing and faster delivery times, taking into account the increasingly important issue of environmental sustainability by minimizing gas emissions. The mathematical model as a separate software package was implemented by Agent Plus in the process of business improvement through continuous monitoring of continuous changes in the market, which also verified its application in practice.