Knowledge

Sustainable shipping involves not only ships but ports as their extension. This chapter examines the issues associated with a green port operation. These include technologies such as cold ironing; market-based practices such as differentiated fairway dues, speed reduction, and noise and dust abatement; and others. The legislative framework in various countries is explained, and various environmental scorecards are discussed. This chapter starts with a brief review on recent academic research in the field of environmental management of ports and presents the status quo in leading ports around the world. The chapter emphasizes on the implementation of speed reduction programmes near the port, the use of cold ironing at berth, and the effects of fuel quality regulation, considering the perspectives of the port authority and the ship operator. The emerging environmental and economic trade-offs are discussed. The aim of this chapter is to be a starting point for researchers seeking to work on green ports. Insights of this chapter may also be useful for stakeholders seeking to select the best emissions reduction option depending on their unique characteristics.

The maritime industry is a crucial hard-to-abate sector that is expected to depend on high-energy density renewable liquid fuels in the future. Traditionally, decarbonization pathways have been assessed assuming exogenous cost trajectories for renewable liquid fuels based on an exogenous learning curve. While past studies have looked at the impact of endogenizing learning curves for a specific technology utilizing linear approximation, a fully endogenous direct non-linear implementation of learning curves in a detailed sectoral model (maritime industry) that explores dynamics concerning sensitive parameters does not yet exist. Here, we apply an open-source optimization model for decarbonizing the maritime industry and further develop the model by encompassing a nonconvex mixed-integer quadratically constrained programming approach to analyze the impact of endogenized learning curves for renewable fuel costs following an experience curve approach. We find that global greenhouse gas emissions are significantly lower (up to 25% over a 30 year horizon) when utilizing endogenously modeled prices for renewable fuels compared to commonly used exogenous learning frameworks. Furthermore, we find that conventional modeling approaches overestimate the cost of climate mitigation, which can have significant policy implication related to carbon pricing and fuel efficiency requirements. In a broader context, this emphasizes the potential opportunities that can be achieved if policymakers and companies accelerate investments that drive down the costs of renewable technologies efficiently and thus trigger endogenous experience-based learning in real life.

The pressure on shipping to reduce its carbon footprint is increasing. Various measures are being proposed at the International Maritime Organization (IMO), including MarketBased Measures (MBMs). This paper investigates the potential of a bunker levy in achieving short-term CO2 emissions reductions. The analysis focuses on the tanker market and uses data from the latest IMO GHG studies and a variety of other sources. The connection between fuel prices and freight rates on the one hand and vessel speeds on the other is investigated for the period 2010-2018. A model to find a tanker’s optimal laden and ballast speeds is also developed and applied to a variety of scenarios. Results show that a bunker levy, depending on the scenario, can lead to short-term CO2 emissions reductions of up to 43%. Policy implications are also discussed, particularly vis-à-vis recent IMO and European Union (EU) action on MBMs.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has adopted a strategy to reduce emissions from international shipping that sets very ambitious targets. The first set of actions, so-called short-term measures, are expected to be implemented by 2023 and result in a reduction of emission intensity by at least 40% by 2030 compared with 2008 levels. Compliance may be achieved through a reduction in sailing speeds, but certain countries have raised concerns on the ramifications of longer transit times on their exports, particularly for perishable products. In this paper, we present a methodology to assess the impacts of various short-term measures on perishable products. We use an extension of a nested modal split model to examine shifts towards other modes of transport. We demonstrate our methodology with a transpacific case study carrying perishable products from South America to China. We compare the short-term measures currently under discussion, in one of the first academic studies to explore these issues. These include a speed limit approach, a power limit, and a goal-based measure. Our results show that a power limit or a goal-based measure would offer some advantages to liner shipping operators using more efficient vessels, unlike a speed limit. Using 2008 as the benchmark year has resulted in small speed reductions required by the liner shipping sector to reach its targets. For perishable cargoes, small speed reductions can be tolerated by the shippers without significant modal shift. Choosing the right short-term strategy is of utmost importance to promote clean shipping practices in the following years.

Global warming and, correspondingly, reducing CO2 emissions is one of the most challenging tasks the world faces today. The maritime industry contributed to 2.89% of the global anthropogenic CO2 emissions. To decrease this share, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) defined, among others, the goal to reduce the carbon intensity of international shipping by 40% until 2030. In this context, the short-term measures recently adopted, in the form of a technical standard (Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index, EEXI) and a rating scheme based on an operational indicator (Carbon Intensity Indicator, CII), mark a crucial step to achieving the mentioned goal. In addition, the EU Commission has recently introduced the FuelEU Maritime Initiative limiting the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of a ship’s energy use incorporating a reduction occurring in a five-year rhythm between 2025 and 2050. The paper investigates the practical options availed to existing containerships of different sizes and technological vintages for meeting the specific EEXI, CII, and GHG intensity reduction requirements imposed by the regulations. The investigation will be based on the actual technical and operational profiles of six sample ships and will consider a set of possible compliance options including, but not limited to, engine power limitation, waste heat recovery system, variable frequency drives, and virtual arrival. The data used originates from noon reports of existing containerships provided by a European industry leader. The ship-specific CO2 emission reduction potentials required for the impact assessment result from either literature or actual data-based calculations. Financial data is used for investigating the economic impact of the reduction requirements. Conclusions drawn include an operational advantage that pre-EEDI ships enjoy when applying engine power limitation (EPL) for EEXI compliance, the occurrence of payback periods exceeding ship lifetimes, and an estimate of the effect that onshore power supply can have on complying with the FuelEU Maritime Initiative.

The paper focuses on the impacts of the inclusion of the maritime sector in the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS). The enforcement of a regional Market-Based Measure (MBM) such as the EU ETS may provide financial incentives to shipping operators to reconfigure their networks and avoid voyages inside the European Economic Area (EEA). This paper investigates the risk of container vessels engaging in evasive port calls by replacing EEA transshipment hubs with nearby non-EEA competitors. We perform a cost-benefit analysis that calculates the cost of EU Allowances (EUAs) for several international services and compares it with a relocation scenario. Our case studies focus on the Piraeus-Izmir and the Algeciras-Tanger Med scenarios and identify the EU carbon price turning point that will render the switch of the transshipment hubs a cost-effective choice for the operator. The results show that the preference of a non-EEA hub will become attractive for carbon prices well below 25 EUR per metric ton of CO2. Further, in all cases, the hub switch results in a rise in the overall carbon emissions attributed to the service which amplifies the risk of carbon leakage. Our results show that the relocation would lead to revenue loss for the EU ETS and penalization of the EEA transshipment hubs in close proximity with hubs outside the EEA, thus posing a threat to their economic activity and development.

The ‘port managing body (PMB)’ plays a central role in the development of the port. Public funding for investment projects of the port managing bodies is common in the EU as well as most other countries. This paper adds to the body of knowledge on port investments and financing challenges with an analysis of data from two surveys that were carried in 2018 and 2023. This analysis yields the following conclusions. First, the PMBs in the EU have shifted their investments, in response to changing investment drivers. The increasing relevance of the transition to a net-zero economy leads to a shift towards investments in projects that reduce environmental effects and/or allow private investments in new green activities such as the production of zero-emission fuels. Second, financial bottlenecks are the most important bottlenecks for the execution of the projects of PMBs. Third, the PMBs have high aspirations with regard to public funding, both on the EU and national level. Fourth, there is a difference between two types of PMBs: state-owned commercial port development companies and the public sector embedded port authorities; the latter execute less projects without public funding and are more oriented on national public funding than on EU funding. Finally, the societal value creation of the investments of PMBs is used to justify public funding aspirations. The PMBs indicate that the majority of their investments create societal value, often by enabling emission reductions and by reduced local negative externalities.

In this video, Professor Harilaos Psaraftis (DTU Technical University of Denmark) will outline the main decarbonization challenges.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted the so-called Initial IMO Strategy in 2018, stipulating that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from international shipping need to be reduced by at least 50% by 2050, and CO2 emissions per transport work are to be reduced by at least 40% by the year 2030, both compared to the 2008 levels.

At the same time, there is an elephant in the room: It is the intent of the European Commission and the European Parliament to include shipping into the EU ETS. How the elephant will be handled is not clear. In this talk we will outline the main decarbonization challenges through a focus on a RoPax case study.
The session was developed in collaboration with MARLOG.

This report is a background report to the MarE-Fuel project financed by the Maritime Fund and the Lauritzen Fund. Partners of the project has been DTU, Anker Invest, Mærsk Line, Copenhagen Economics, OMT and DFDS. In the report, potential decarbonization roadmaps or pathways for the maritime industry are presented, as well as the methodology of deriving them. Different future fuels and their emissions are highlighted. In addition, biomass availability plays an essential role in climate mitigation efforts towards net-zero by 2050, and thus we examined different biomass availability scenarios alongside greenhouse-gas emissions cap scenarios. The assumptions related to the underlying emissions can be found in the first chapter of the report. Besides the underlying emissions for a decarbonized maritime industry, the ship stock and the underlying transport demand play an essential role for a future decarbonized maritime industry. In the second chapter of the report, we address this issue by explaining how ship stock and shipping demand have been incorporated into the model. Finally, we present the optimization ship stock model developed to generate roadmap scenarios. We show the objective function and the underlying constraints of the model. The results of this work are presented and discussed. We also show some sensitivity analysis, which will shed light on the relevant parameters for the futureof the maritime industry. Our main findings can be found in the end of the report.

Uncertainties on the global availability and affordability of alternative marine fuels are stalling the shipping sector’s decarbonization course. Several candidate measures are being discussed at the International Maritime Organization, including market-based measures (MBMs) and environmental policies such as carbon taxes and emissions trading systems, as means to decarbonize. Their implementation increases the cost of fossil fuel consumption and provides fiscal incentives to shipping stakeholders to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions reductions. MBMs can bridge the price gap between alternative and conventional fuels and generate revenues for funding the up-scaling of alternative fuels’ production, storage and distribution facilities and, thus, enhance their availability. By estimating the fuels’ implementation and operational costs and carbon abatement potential, this study calculates marginal abatement costs and estimates the level of carbon pricing needed to render investments into alternative fuels cost-effective. The results can assist policymakers in establishing robust and effective maritime decarbonization policies.