Green fuels — A new challenge for marine industry

Abstract

According with the new European Regulations the supply chain sustainability became more and more challenging for the shipping companies. They must adapt their ships to respect the new regulations, but this means economic investment for environmental and social scopes? Or replacement of traditional fuel with a green one, will make the companies more competitive, will reduce costs and will improve the operational performance? It can be difficult for the top management to take and assume a decision like this. In this paper we will use the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), like a management instrument, based on Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) to see what solution brings more advantages for the ship owners and for the community. An illustrative case with two alternative marine fuels, liquified natural gas (LNG) and oil gas, was presented and analyzed in this paper using the proposed method. The most sustainable scenario being the one in which is used natural liquefied gas like marine fuel. The results obtained demonstrate that the method used to prioritize alternative marine fuels is feasible and helps decision makers.

Keywords

• Green fuel
• Analytic hierarchy process
• Multi-Criteria Decision Making
• Oil gas
• Liquefied natural gas
• Port management