More than 6% of global carbon dioxide emissions are caused by freight transport by road dominating emissions from the freight transport sector. To keep climate targets in reach, a rapid decarbonisation is necessary, while holistically considering trade-offs with other environmental impacts. This study compares the environmental impact profiles of road freight transport to the alternative via rail, under different prospective scenarios for the transport fleets and the socio-economic landscape in 2050, using prospective Life Cycle Assessment (pLCA). To do so the database ecoinvent v3.9.1 is systematically modified according to scenarios of the Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) REMIND, using the Python library premise. The Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is performed in ActivityBrowser (AB) using the impact assessment method Environmental Footprint (EF) v3.1. Results show that
all environmental impacts categories across scenarios are significantly lower for rail than for road freight transport, due to the higher energy and material efficiencies of trains. Depending on the scenario and year, relative climate change impacts per tonne kilometre (tkm) by rail freight transport only make up between 15-26% of the impacts from road freight transport. Absolute climate change impacts can be reduced with a higher share of freight transport by
rail, decreased absolute freight transport growth, and increased electrification of the vehicle fleets, while the later increases most impact category results if applied to lorries.