One of the main challenges for the future in logistics lies in energy consumption. France has the ambition to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The most ambitious research work envisioning the solutions to do so is ‘Futurs énergétiques 2050’ (October 2021) by RTE, the company in charge of the French Electricity Transportation Network. The work assesses multiple scenarios involving various energy mixes (wind, solar, nuclear etc.). It concludes that the net carbon neutrality in 2050 can only be made possible through sobriety, despite mobility switch to electricity (i.e. at least a 40% decrease final energy consumption, plummeting from 1600 TWh to 930 TWh in 2050). In the logistics field, vast progress has been made to lower the energy intensity of road freight transport. Some promising solutions and technologies have been introduced, namely the improvement of vehicle performances, the alternatives fuels, as well as the parallel evolution of physical and digital infrastructures. It resulted in a cut from 0.077 tonne of oil equivalent per thousand tonne-km in 1992 to 0.057 in 2012 (Llorca and Jamasb, 2017). But the simultaneous soar in freight flows quantity and traffic prevented a global decrease in energy consumption. This challenge is stepped up in urban logistics, as it involves managing -in already congested cities- supply channels and small vehicles that are amplifying, multiplying, and becoming more and more intricate. It seems that all the solutions and technologies that have been introduced are necessary, but insufficient, to meet the expectations in terms of energy sobriety. Significant gains will come from a radical shift in logistics shared infrastructure and from innovative organizations. In this vein, CargoCap (Stein and Schoesser, 2003) and other projects are exploring new infrastructures potential while horizontal collaborative transport as a new organization of freight systems has been largely studied and its effectiveness and efficiency has been proven in recent literature (Pan et al., 2019). In this work we will focus on the energy effectiveness of a new freight dedicated infrastructure. This work assesses the potential a large scale cooperative dedicated system, involving shared infrastructure, for the distribution of freight in the city. This is conceived as an alternative to scattered road haulage, in order to significantly cut down energy consumption. With the goal of energy sobriety, we set the twofold objective of modelling the energy consumption of such a dedicated freight supply system, and of drawing conclusions regarding the best practices by means of an impact assessment of the main design parameters. A distribution system’s energy demand strongly depends on specific choices of implementation, which can involve putting back on the agenda some discontinued practices, as well as taking advantage of new technologies and innovative processes. Keeping that in mind, our methodology is devised to comprehensively assess all the available implementation choices, both in technology and in layout. The method consists in taking a step back to fundamental energy theorems, which parameters can be set to stand for any scenario of interest. The model includes transportation modes characteristics (e.g. aerodynamics, rolling resistance etc.), as well as kinetics repercussions of delivery management, handling, and infrastructure accessibility (e.g. driving cycles, congestion etc.). For our purposes of generality, but not limited to, the urban layout and the main routing steps are simplified as a general dense area accessed via a ring road. It is applied to the specific case of Paris, benefiting from previous studies and surveys, as well as government approved open data, quantifying all aspects of freight supply. As far as limits are concerned, it can be put forward that the model is overly simplified and blind on indirect energy consumption which is considerable in overall energy demand. Our work precisely spots out the most impactful parameters, and the high potential axis for refinement, factoring uncertainty. It also specifies where direct and indirect energy drives align, and, on the contrary, a judicious compromise should be investigated. These findings give the necessary tools to further the research into a refined and expanded model, a methodology and insights for urban freight distribution applied here in large cities.