The purpose of this short paper is to provide a brief and non‐encyclopedic commentary on the decisions made at IMO MEPC 76 (June 2021) and assess the prospects for the future of shipping decarbonization in the aftermath of that meeting. The recent action of the European Commission to include shipping into the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) is also discussed.
Due to environmental and economic issues as well as the high performance of marine vessels, efficient energy using has been becoming more demanding. Also, in order to have a zero-emission ship, the utilization of a fuel cell combined with energy storage such as batteries gets more and more attention. In this work, a zero-emission hybrid energy system, including fuel cells, batteries, and cold-ironing, is employed to have an environmentally friendly vessel, and to create condition in which ship operates with high performance, both energy management and components sizing of fuel cells and batteries using real data of ferry boat and intelligent optimization method are done simultaneously. In addition, all constraints related to energy management and component sizing with the topography of the boat and electric power sources are represented and analyzed thoroughly. Ultimately, hourly energy management and component sizing for one specific day are considered in this work, and to optimize this problem, the Improved Sine Cosine Algorithm (ISCA) is utilized. According to obtained results, the proposed energy management and component sizing result in the high-performance ship which could be utilized in the marine industry.
Slow steaming is being practised in many sectors of the shipping industry. It is induced principally by depressed shipping markets and/or high fuel prices. In recent years the environmental dimension of slow steaming has also become important, as ship emissions are directly proportional to fuel burned. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the practice of slow steaming from various angles. In that context, a taxonomy of models is presented, some fundamentals are outlined, the main trade-offs are analysed, and some decision models are presented. Some examples are finally presented so as to highlight the main issues that are at play.
Among the spectrum of logistics – based measures for sustainable shipping, this chapter focuses on speed optimization. This involves the selection of an appropriate speed by the vessel, so as to optimize a certain objective. As ship speed is not fixed, depressed shipping markets and/or high fuel prices induce slow steaming which is being practised in many sectors of the shipping industry. In recent years the environmental dimension of slow steaming has also become important, as ship emissions are directly proportional to fuel burned. Win-win solutions are sought, but they will not necessarily be possible. The chapter presents some basics, discusses the main trade-offs and also examines combined speed and route optimization problems. Some examples are presented so as to highlight the main issues that are at play, and the regulatory dimension of speed reduction via speed limits is also discussed.
“Speed optimization and speed reduction” are included in the set of candidate short-term measures under discussion at the International Maritime Organization (IMO), in the quest to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ships. However, there is much confusion on what either speed optimization or speed reduction may mean, and some stakeholders have proposed mandatory speed limits as a measure to achieve GHG emissions reduction. The purpose of this paper is to shed some light into this debate, and specifically examine whether reducing speed by imposing a speed limit is better than doing the same by imposing a bunker levy. To that effect, the two options are compared. The main result of the paper is that the speed limit option exhibits a number of deficiencies as an instrument to reduce GHG emissions, at least vis-à-vis the bunker levy option.
In 2018 the International Maritime Organization (IMO) agreed to cut the shipping sector’s overall CO2 output by 50% by 2050. One of the key methods in reaching this goal is to improve operations to limit fuel consumption. However, it is difficult to optimize speed for a complete liner shipping network as routes interact with each other, and several business constraints must be respected. This paper presents a unified model for speed optimization of a liner shipping network, satisfying numerous real-life business constraints. The speed optimization is in this research achieved by rescheduling the port call times of a network, thus, the network is not changed. The business constraints are among others related to transit times, port work shifts and emission control areas. Other restrictions are fixed times for canal crossing, speed restrictions in the piracy areas and desire for robust solutions. Vessel sharing agreements and other collaboration between companies must also be included. The modeling of the different restrictions is described in detail and tested on real-life data. The scientific contribution of this paper is threefold: We present a unified model for speed optimization together with numerous business constraints. We present a general framework for handling routes with different frequencies. Moreover, we present a bi-objective model for balancing robustness of schedules against fuel consumption. The tests show that the real-life requirements can be handled by mixed integer programming and that the model finds significant reductions of bunker consumption and cost for large-scale real-life instances.
Shore power is an important green technology used by ports to reduce carbon emissions. This paper investigates how to design subsidy strategy for promoting the installation and utilization of shore power. However, while installation subsidies may promote the installation of SPI in ports, resulting in a reduction in ship emissions, utilization subsidies may attract more ship visits, which may increase the total emissions of a port. Therefore, subsidies for shore power utilization and installation should be optimized to minimize the cost to government (comprising the environmental costs of ship emissions, the cost of utilization or installation subsidies, and carbon taxes) and maximize the profit for ports (including profit from original and new ships, utilization and installation subsidies, and carbon taxes). Using the Stackelberg game methodology, we discuss five cases to give a comprehensive analysis of the design of different subsidy policies, including no subsidy, SPI-utilization subsidy undertaken by port, SPI-utilization subsidy undertaken by port and government, carbon emission tax policy considering SPI-utilization subsidy, and SPI-utilization and SPI-installation subsidies undertaken by port and government. Managerial insights are generated according to the theoretical analysis and numerical experiments results, which can give references to the government and port operators.
Discusses the challenges of raising finance to build and convert low- and zero-emission ships as required by international law and policy to mitigate climate change.
This paper examines the costs and benefits of reduction measures for the shipping industry to comply with the forthcoming sulphur emission regulations. Sulphur scrubbers and marine gas oil are two promising alternatives for ship owners. However, their economic comparisons are primarily based on a private perspective. This paper provides a wider viewpoint by integrating the private abatement costs of ship owners and the social environmental benefits from emission reduction. The results showed that the price spread between marine gas oil and heavy fuel oil is a determining factor in making this choice. Marine gas oil tends to have higher net present values than scrubbers when the price spread of fuel is less than 231 Euros per tonne. Furthermore, it is more beneficial to install a scrubber on new ships than retrofits. An old ship is not suitable for a scrubber installation when its remaining lifespan is less than 4 years.
As policy makers acknowledge the high degree of supply chain vulnerability and the impact of maritime emissions on coastal population health, there has been a consistent effort to strengthen maritime security and environmental regulations. In recent years, overdependence on deeper and wider multinational supply and production chains and lean-optimization has led to tightly integrated systems with little “slack” and high sensitivity to disruptions.
This study considers the impact of Emission Control Areas and establishes a link between environmental and network resilience performance for maritime supply chains using operational cost and SOx emissions cost metrics. The proposed methodological framework analyzes various abatement options, disruption intensities, fuel pricing instances and regulatory strategies. The methodology utilizes a minimum cost flow assignment and an arc velocity optimization model for vessel speed to establish the payoff for various network states. Additionally, an attacker defender game is set up to identify optimal regulatory strategies under various disruption scenarios. The results are complemented by a sensitivity analysis on SOx emissions pricing, to better equip policy makers to manage environmental and resilience legislation. The methodology and findings provide a comprehensive analytic approach to optimize maritime supply chain performance beyond minimisation of operational costs, to also minimize exposure to costly supply chain disruptions.