By Published on 5 mars 2026 4h00
While the energy transition is focusing on electric or hydrogen-powered engines, an obvious truth is still struggling to assert itself: the massive reduction of CO₂ emissions will not come primarily from changing engines, but from transforming the way logistics flows themselves are organized.
According to the 2024 transport report, the transport sector remains the largest emitter of greenhouse gases (34%), ahead of agriculture (21%) and industry (17%). Yet most political and industrial attention remains focused on technological solutions such as electric batteries or hydrogen for heavy vehicles.
However, when it comes to long-distance freight transport, these technologies face major obstacles: the weight of batteries, the scarcity of infrastructure, the high cost of hydrogen, and the enormous energy requirements needed to produce and distribute it. In this context, betting everything on new propulsion technologies risks creating a “green illusion” that diverts attention from more immediate and effective solutions.
Logistics flow reduction: intelligent sobriety
The decisive lever lies in eliminating unnecessary freight flows through better route optimization and the pooling of logistics operations, particularly through logistics pooling and Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI). These collaborative intelligence solutions attack waste at its root: partially loaded trucks (average load rates of 60–75%), empty return trips (20–40% of journeys, according to a study by the Union TLF), duplicate routes between competing suppliers.
In logistics pooling, a software “control tower” automatically generates optimization calculations using specialized software. These tools analyze stock levels and the needs of different actors to generate the orders to be placed and to plan optimal loading. Suppliers in the retail sector—often competitors in the market—become allies in logistics operations. By joining the same “pool,” they group their inventories in a shared warehouse so that their orders can be loaded from a single location. Logistics pooling therefore promotes cooperation rather than competition.
Retailers who pool their supply chains reduce their emissions by at least 25%. With Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI)—where the supplier manages the client’s inventory in order to optimize deliveries—truck load rates can reach 85–100% in large-scale retail, drastically reducing unnecessary trips and the carbon footprint. At the national level, eliminating just 10% of unnecessary journeys would already represent several million tonnes of CO₂ avoided—without massive subsidies and without waiting until 2030.
A European challenge
Digital platforms now make it possible to synchronize shippers, carriers, and industrial companies. They reduce empty trips, anticipate orders, and adjust freight flows to real needs. The enormous waste in the logistics chain is therefore not inevitable: intelligent management of flows is within reach. The challenge now is to convince Europe to adopt this pragmatic approach, which has already been tested and can be deployed immediately from our territories. Just as energy demand reduction in buildings has become a central lever of the energy transition, logistics flow reduction represents a model of efficient and sustainable sobriety, replacing the race toward new engines with a genuine collective project based on organizational intelligence.
Encouraging the fiscal incentives for pooling, opening data platforms, and promoting cooperation are structural efficiency levers that could accelerate decarbonization more effectively than any technological breakthrough. Investing in the control and optimization of logistics flows means choosing the fastest, most frugal, and most profitable lever for a truly sustainable transition.
Geoffrey Berselli
Deputy Managing Director– Interlog Group,
an Orléans-based mid-sized company specializing in the optimization of logistics flows, currently expanding internationally with the upcoming opening of an office in India.
