Global climate change, which is largely attributed to human activity, is one of the foremost challenges of the 21st century. In recent times, there have been notable alterations in the Earth's climate, resulting in profound impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity. These alterations are caused by greenhouse gas, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Greenhouse gas emissions are caused by practices such as deforestation, industrial operations, and the combustion of fossil fuels in vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and manufacturing facilities. The maritime and aviation industry is currently responsible for approximately 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Due to logistical and economic constraints, these industries are heavily reliant on liquid fuels, making direct electrification options unavailable for large parts of these sectors. As a result, these sectors are considered ‘hard to abate’. Understanding the future climate mitigation challenges associated with the maritime and aviation sectors is crucial in shaping effective policy measures, avoiding stranded assets, and preserving the chance to meet Paris Agreement-compatible emission reduction pathways.
This thesis identifies three main challenges and proposes modelling approaches to address them when modelling decarbonization pathways for the aviation and maritime sectors. From these challenges, research gaps have been identified that this PhD thesis aims to fill. Three models have been developed for the thesis: a maritime optimization model, a maritime demand model, and an aviation demand model. The modelling landscape and methodology vary across models, ranging from econometrics and data science to mathematical optimization.
To overcome the challenges and fill in the research gaps, three corresponding modelling approaches have been successfully applied:
1. Developing a holistic decarbonization modelling landscape. This includes life-cycle representations of technology costs and emissions, the upscaling of bottleneck technologies, the availability of sustainable biomass, and consideration of competing demand from other industries, as well as representations of policy levers such as carbon pricing or improvements to fuel efficiency.
2. Developing demand models that interpret the underlying scenario narrative consistently (SSP framework).
3. Improving the representation of technological learning for low-carbon technologies in energy system models.
The findings acquired by applying these three modelling approaches are valuable for energy modellers, climate scientists, and policymakers and offer unique insights into the inherent system dynamics associated with decarbonization of hard-to-abate sectors. Utilizing this modelling landscape reveals that current decarbonization efforts for hard-to-abate sectors are insufficient.
Each year maritime accidents occur at sea causing human casualties. Training facilities serve to reduce the risk of human error by allowing maritime teams to train safety procedures in cooperative real-size immersive simulators. However, they are expensive and only few maritime professionals have access to such simulators. Virtual Reality (VR) can provide a digital all-immersive learning environment at a reduced cost allowing for increased access. However, a key ingredient of what makes all-immersive physical simulators effective is that they allow for multiple participants to engage in cooperative social interaction. Social interaction which allows trainees to develop skills and competencies in navigating situational awareness essential for safety training. Social interaction requires social fidelity. Moving from physical simulators into digital simulators based upon VR technology thus challenges us as HCI researchers to figure out how to design social fidelity into immersive training simulators. We explore social fidelity theoretically and technically by combining core conceptual work from CSCW research to the design experimentation of social fidelity for maritime safety training. We argue that designing for social fidelity in VR simulators requires designers to contextualize the VR experience in location, artifacts, and actors structured through dependencies in work allowing trainees to perform situational awareness, coordination, and communication which are all features of social fidelity. Further, we identify the risk of breaking the social fidelity immersion related to the intent and social state of the participants entering the simulation. Finally, we suggest that future designs of social fidelity should consider not only trainees in the design, but also the social relations created by the instructors’ guidance as part of the social fidelity immersion.
Ecosystems are viewed as important sources of innovation. While contracts, rules, policies, and industrial standards have been identified as important for coordinating and aligning inter-firm relationships, tools for the collective, collaborative orchestration of ecosystems have yet to be fully identified and articulated by scholars. The core contribution of this paper, the authors contend, is that corporate foresight tools, as applied at the level of the ecosystem, have the potential to orchestrate ecosystems. To this end, the authors examine the practical use of corporate foresight tools, in this case, roadmapping and scenario planning, as employed by ECOPRODIGI, an Interreg Baltic Sea project designed to advance the EU's strategy for eco-efficient Sustainable Blue Economy in the Roll-on/Roll-off (Ro-Ro) shipping ecosystem. Results demonstrate how ecosystem-level foresight significantly differs from traditional foresight centered around a focal firm. Corporate foresight tools, as applied to an ecosystem: 1) Target a diverse set of ecosystem actors beyond the segment's focal firm, including complementary firms, investors, and non-market actors; 2) Engage ecosystem actors, rather than only the focal firm, in shared strategy development based on a diverse mix of foresight tools; and 3) serve to orient and reify the ecosystem by charting the collective anticipation of innovations, policies, etc., in a shared set of future options. In the end, the authors find that corporate foresight tools operate as constitutive elements of ecosystems, that is, the tools help enact the ecosystem not as an abstract concept but as a shared, lived reality.
The maritime sector is a key asset for the world economy, but its environmental impact represents a major concern. The sector is primarily supplied with Heavy Fuel Oil, which results in high pollutant emissions. The sector has set targets for deacrbonisation, and alternative fuels have been identified as a short-to medium-term option. The paper addresses the complexity related to the activities of the maritime industry, and discusses the possible contribution of alternative fuels. A sector segmentation is proposed to define the consumption of each sub-segment, so to compare it with the current alternative fuel availability at European level. The paper shows that costs and GHG savings are fundamental enablers for the uptake of alternative fuels, but other aspects are also crucial: technical maturity, safety regulation, expertise needed, etc. The demand for alternative fuels has to be supported by an existing, reliable infrastructure, and this is not yet the case for many solutions (i.e. electricity, hydrogen or methanol). Various options are already available for maritime sector, but the future mix of fuels used will depend on technology improvements, availability, costs and the real potential for GHG emissions reduction.