Assessing the economic and environmental impact of freight transport sectors in Thailand using computable general equilibrium model

In Thailand, the percentage of energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in freight transportation sectors keep growing rapidly in the opposite side of GHG reduction target. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impacts on socio-economic status and GHG emissions in Thailand when introducing new greenhouse gas mitigation options in freight transportation sectors according to Thailand National Master Plan. This research constructed the country level dynamic multi-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model replicating the input-output table of Thailand in 2010 as a benchmark data. In this analysis the 3 scenarios have been assessed by CGE model. BaU represents the reference scenario that does not limit total GHG emissions. Using Thailand’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) plan as mitigation target, NDC is the scenario that limits total GHG emissions in 2030 to 20% lower than BaU scenario. Then this study introduces mitigation options (S_all scenario) to freight transport sectors including road sector, rail sector and water sector under NDC mitigation target to assess the impact of new mitigation options on economic indicators and GHG emissions. As a result, NDC scenario showed that GDP and consumption in 2030 will drop by 2.1% and 3.5% respectively compared with those in BaU. Introducing mitigation options in freight transport sectors contributed to lower GDP loss and consumption loss by 1.04% and 0.9% respectively compared to NDC. It is also found that under GHG emissions limitation, GHG price will become effective and it will increase the cost of energy intensive goods in both industry and household sectors. Thailand economy may suffer loss from this reduction of energy intensive production; however, introduction of mitigation options in freight transport sectors will help compensate the production loss through the increase of production activities in low carbon energy intensive sectors.