Decarbonising Logistics: The urgent shift India can’t afford to delay

By Mr. Harsh Vardhan Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO – India, MatchLog Solutions

India’s long-term development goals also include the efficiency of its logistics sector. As freight volumes grow, infrastructure expands, and supply chains deepen, logistics will determine how equitably and sustainably that growth reaches every region and every enterprise. But the sector that connects the country is also placing a growing strain on the environment and this challenge is at core of any conversation about economic readiness. Decarbonising logistics is about safeguarding economic efficiency, protecting long-term trade competitiveness, and ensuring that India’s infrastructure choices today do not become a challenge. If the country continues to build freight capacity on a carbon-heavy base, future correction will be costlier, slower, and far more disruptive.

Why the cost of inaction is rising
The logistics sector accounts for an estimated 13.5% of India’s total greenhouse gas emissions. This is a structural reality shaped by decades of underinvestment in multimodal transport, over-reliance on diesel-powered road freight, and unorganized vehicle ownership. Trucks handle nearly 70% of India’s freight. Most are small fleet operators, with little access to clean energy options or the financial buffers required for transition. This fragmented structure makes it harder to coordinate change, track emissions, or enforce new standards.

Meanwhile, warehousing, especially cold chain and e-commerce infrastructure, is expanding without standardization. The growth of tier 2 and 3 consumption hubs, while important, risks locking in higher emissions if future-ready standards are not embedded now. Every additional kilometre of road-driven freight, every new facility built without energy efficiency, quietly compounds the problem. Over the next 10 to 15 years, global trade flows will increasingly penalise high-carbon supply chains. If India’s exports are to remain competitive in a world moving towards carbon-adjusted pricing, logistics emissions cannot be treated as someone else’s problem.

Greening the sector is good logistics
A low-carbon logistics ecosystem is, in fact, a more efficient one. Empty return trips, poor route optimisation, and the lack of aggregation across freight corridors are all cost concerns. Solutions that reduce emissions also tend to improve fleet productivity, shorten delivery cycles, and lower per-unit transport costs.

India’s push towards dedicated freight corridors, coastal shipping, and inland waterways reflects this alignment. These modes are significantly more energy-efficient than road transport. Rail freight emits roughly one-fifth the carbon of trucks per tonne-kilometre. Yet modal shift has been slow, held back by first-mile and last-mile bottlenecks, limited warehousing near railheads, and reluctance to break bulk at multimodal nodes.

Policy initiatives like PM Gati Shakti and the National Logistics Policy have correctly identified these structural issues. What matters now is execution. A strong backbone of integrated, multimodal logistics, supported by digital visibility, route planning platforms, and cleaner first-mile options, can unlock emission reductions at scale.

The opportunity for private sector leadership
While the policy direction is clear, much of the implementation must be market-driven. India’s freight sector is too diverse and decentralised for a one-size-fits-all transition model. What it needs is a series of proven, replicable innovations across different use-cases. For instance, we have focused on circular logistics principles, particularly optimizing the movement of empty containers. Through triangulation models and digital orchestration, we have shown that emissions can be cut substantially simply by using capacity more intelligently. This approach requires coordination, transparency, and the will to operate differently.

Many other players are now piloting LNG-based heavy vehicles, EVs for urban freight, and solar-powered warehouses. But these remain isolated examples. To scale, we need better access to green financing, lower-cost retrofitting options for small operators, and incentives linked to emission savings. The private sector will move when the economics are clear and the enabling infrastructure is in place.

What must change next

Three things must happen in parallel. First, decarbonisation metrics need to become standard in public infrastructure projects. Roads, parks, warehouses, and transport hubs should all be benchmarked not just for cost and speed, but for carbon intensity. Second, emissions reporting in logistics needs to be made more transparent. Voluntary disclosures are a good start, but a more unified digital framework is necessary. And third, state governments must be brought more actively into the fold: urban freight policies, warehousing norms, and energy standards are often local issues with national consequences.

This is not a linear transition. There will be trade-offs between speed, cost, and scale. But the cost of waiting is now greater than the cost of action. India’s logistics sector will continue to grow and it must. The question is whether that growth locks us into high emissions for decades, or whether it becomes the platform for a cleaner, smarter, more competitive economy. In the end, decarbonizing logistics is the foundation on which India’s long-term resilience will be built.

Author :

Mr. Harsh Vardhan Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO – India, MatchLog Solutions