Nature Communications (Feb 2018)

Energy use and life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of drones for commercial package delivery

  • Joshuah K. Stolaroff,
  • Constantine Samaras,
  • Emma R. O’Neill,
  • Alia Lubers,
  • Alexandra S. Mitchell,
  • Daniel Ceperley

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-02411-5
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 13

Abstract

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The use of drones to deliver commercial packages is poised to become a new industry. Here the authors show that replacing truck delivery by drones can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy use when the drone size and additional warehousing requirements are limited.