Abstract
Transportation fuels flow through a complex supply chain from the point
of crude oil extraction to the point of combustion. We present a model
that tracks the movement of gasoline and diesel across the petroleum
infrastructure network consisting of pipeline, tankers, trucks, trains,
refineries, and blenders. While direct CO2 emissions, from combustion,
outweigh all supply chain emissions from processing and fuel movement,
the indirect CO2 emissions also contribute a not insignificant amount of
emissions driven by demand of transportation fuels. We resolve
county-scale supply chain (Scope 3) CO2 emissions using publicly
accessible data to quantify fuel movement between different linkages and
transportation modes across the country. For most of the US, the exact
volume of fuel moved between counties, from different refineries, along
different modes of transportation, is not explicitly known. Linear
optimization is used to model these flows with supply and demand related
constraints. This work presents the most complete view of
spatially-resolved scope-3 style CO2 emissions from United States’ road
transportation fuels. It offers a chance to investigate spatial patterns
of scope-3 emissions across the country, as well as spatial differences
between scope-1 and scope-3. Understanding embodied CO2 emissions of
commodity flows across the US has implications for national and local
policy.