ABSTRACT
In the present paper it is studied the environmental impact of connecting the region of Cadiz, Huelva and the Portuguese Algarve’s coast by means of maritime transport. For this purpose, it is applied a bottom-up methodology to find out and compare the distance and times of the land and maritime routes, the fuel consumption and the emission of 23 polluting compounds for a car-type and 20 types of boats. Additionally, taking the emission levels into consideration, the Air Quality Index (AQI) is calculated and a new concept of an “Environmental Index (EI)” that condensates them is formulated and presented. Taking Cadiz as the home origin, the greatest differences in the emissions occur in the boats that have a lowest consumption and in those maritime routes whose distances are smaller than the ones of the current existing land routes.
