The Relative Contribution of Transportation to Supply Chain Greenhouse Gas Emissions: A Case Study of American Wheat

This life cycle assessment case study puts the supply chain contribution of transportation to greenhouse gas emissions in context with other contributors using American wheat grain as a representative product. Multiple locations, species and routes to market are investigated. Transportation contributes 39–56% of the supply chain emissions, whereas there is a 101% intra-species and 62% inter-species variation in greenhouse gas emissions from production, demonstrating that transportation is both of smaller magnitude, and less sensitive than other factors, in particular, field sequestration.