Abstract
The need to reduce carbon emission to cope with climate change has gradually become a global consensus, which also poses a great challenge to cold-chain logistics companies. It forces them to implement green distribution strategies. To help the distribution companies reduce carbon emission, this paper studies two aspects-carbon tax value and investing in the freshness-keeping cost-and proposes corresponding solutions. A new green vehicle-routing model for fresh agricultural products with the goal of minimizing the total cost is proposed. To solve the model proposed, an improved ant-colony optimization (IACO) is designed specifically. On one hand, the experimental results show that the increase in carbon tax will restrict the carbon emission behaviors of the distribution companies, but it will also reduce their economic benefits to a certain extent, at the same time. On the other hand, investing in the freshness-keeping cost can help actively achieve the carbon emission reduction target, reduce the loss of fresh agricultural products in the distribution process, improve the company's economic benefits and satisfy customers. The comparison results of different algorithms prove that the IACO proposed in this paper is more effective in solving the model, which can help increase the economic benefits of the companies and reduce carbon emission. This study provides a new solution for cold-chain logistics distribution companies to reduce carbon emission in the distribution process, and also provides a reference for government departments to formulate carbon tax policies.