Cleaner Logistics and Supply Chain (Mar 2022)
Ports’ role in shipping decarbonisation: A common port incentive scheme for shipping greenhouse gas emissions reduction
Abstract
Shipping greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction has always been slow, which has led to the tightening of international and regional regulations, e.g. IMO’s 2023 measures, and the EU Climate law. While the shipping industry is accelerating decarbonisation, questions are raised as to what roles ports can play in adopting measures to facilitate shipping GHG emissions reduction, particularly through the incentives schemes. Therefore, by means of a content analysis review, this study aims to investigate this phenomenon and scrutinise various existing incentive schemes. Findings indicate that there are various measures ports can adopt to facilitate ships’ GHG emissions reduction, but the current incentive schemes are onerous, and their uptake by shipping, and by ports as incentive provider, is still limited. The focus of these schemes is not solely on GHG emissions reduction, and thus, they don’t strongly support shipping decarbonisation. Given these issues, a framework of seven actions for a port common incentive scheme to reduce shipping GHG emissions at the ship-port interface, and in maritime supply chains, is proposed. The underlying actions have been developed to arrive at a successful scheme by sorting out the inherent challenges in existing incentive schemes. Thus, the framework suggests incentivising front-runner ships that implement decarbonisation technologies beyond regulations, harmonising requirements, minimising underlying obstacles, creating a level playing field, and ultimately aligning with the IMO forthcoming regulations. This study serves as a guiding framework for port managers and policymakers to either adopt the proposed common incentive scheme or, at least, to reconfigure the current adopted incentives. Identified fertile future research areas promote scholarly discussions in the field.
