Shipping emissions, especially those in port areas, have become one of the main concerns of the maritime industry. Shore power has been recognized as a promising way to alleviate the problem. However, shore power has not been extensively adopted in China. Therefore, from the government’s point of view, this paper conducts a case study of the shore power deployment problem based on the real container shipping network of China, including the Port of Hong Kong. In addition to the basic case, we, also, conduct numerical experiments with different budgets, to analyze its influence on the optimal subsidy plan and cost–benefit analysis. The results give two useful managerial insights: (i) it might be unnecessary to spend a large amount of the budget on subsidization, and (ii) the subsidy expenditure needs to be considered together with the final bunker reduction, while creating the budget.
Port operators provide attractive port charges, and liner shipping companies make decisions on ship scheduling, in accordance with port charges. This paper proposes a liner ship scheduling problem with time-dependent port charges. Empirical studies on the ship arrival time distribution basically show a periodic phenomenon, which can be used to support the reasonability and validity of our time-dependent port charge scheme. To address our problem under different scenarios, we propose two mixed-integer nonlinear programming models, where the nonlinear objective functions can be linearized by using an outer approximation method. Numerical experiments are provided to analyze the effectiveness of our port charge scheme.
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is a promising measure to reduce shipping emissions and alleviate air pollution problem, especially in coastal areas. Currently, the lack of a complete infrastructure system is preventing the extensive application of dual-fueled ships that are mainly LNG-powered. Given that groups of LNG bunkering stations are under establishment in various countries and areas, the construction plan becomes critical. In this paper, we focus on the LNG bunkering station deployment problem, which identifies the locations of the stations to be built. A large-scale case study of China’s container shipping network was conducted. The problem scale of this case paper exceeds those in previous academic studies. Thus, this study better validates the model and solution method proposed than numerical experiments that are randomly generated. Sensitive analyses on the LNG price, bunkering station construction costs, and total budget were carried out. The results yielded provide practical suggestions and managerial insights for the competent department. In addition to building a complete bunkering system, subsidies to ship operators for consuming LNG and higher production efficiency in bunkering station construction also help promote the application of LNG as marine fuel.