How green strategies can improve warehouse sustainability

Warehouses are key components of supply chains and contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions due to the many energy-intensive processes that take place within them, such as: material handling activities, lighting, cooling/heating needs, and resource-intensive use (water, fuel, packaging, etc.).

As a result, they require re-evaluation of processes, more efficient use of energy, and integration of renewable energy.

However, the use of such energy sources presents certain difficulties, such as the high variability and unpredictability that characterize renewable energy sources themselves. This is a major challenge for companies in the logistics sector, which are increasingly being pushed to review their processes to make efficient use of renewable energy.

To address these challenges, green strategies can be identified that can be implemented within logistics facilities to increase their self-consumption (the amount of energy produced and consumed by the buildings themselves).

These are the issues addressed in a recent study published in "Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessment" (SETA) entitled "Green warehousing practices: Assessing the impact of strategies to increase PV self-consumption in a logistics warehouse".

The publication is the result of the joint work, within the PNRR CN MOST - Spoke 10 "Sustainable Logistics" project, between the Department of Management Economics and Industrial Engineering of the Politecnico di Milano - Prof. Sara Perotti and Eng. Luca Cannava - and the Department of Energy of the Politecnico di Milano - Prof. Fabio Rinaldi, Prof. Behzad Najafi and Eng. Farzad Dadras Javan.

Specifically, the research uses a modeling-simulation approach to evaluate the energy, environmental, and economic impacts of two green warehousing interventions (a management concept that aims to optimize the environmental impact of warehouses) within a logistics property managed by a third party logistics provider (3PL):

1. Replacing the gas heating system with heat pumps to meet the building's heating needs using electricity generated on-site by photovoltaic panels;
2. Introduction of forklifts powered by lithium-ion batteries, with opportunistic recharging during peak photovoltaic power generation.

The study highlights the importance of using simulation to test the effectiveness of the identified interventions.

The strategies analyzed aim at synchronizing the energy demand of the warehouse with the internally generated renewable energy production. This approach allows for a more efficient use of self-generated energy, as demonstrated by the simulation results.

The results obtained not only enrich academic research, but also provide valuable insights for companies seeking to make their logistics processes more sustainable.