The paper explores maritime environmental regulations, analyzing industry perspectives and their operational execution. It critically assesses the International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulations' effectiveness in mitigating climate challenges within the shipping domain. The central argument is that the evolving and intricate nature of maritime regulations often impedes policy goal realization, enforcement, impact evaluation, and equity perception. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, this research gathers, analyses, and interprets data via surveys and interviews. This exploration seeks to evaluate the regulations' impact on reducing shipping's negative impact, especially concerning emissions, waste management, and noise pollution, under the umbrella of smart regulations. The results indicate that the current regulatory approach is neither comprehensive nor immediate, necessitating a more agile, digitally enabled framework to adapt to fast-changing industry conditions.

This study considers incentive provisions for investment decisions related to waste heat recovery system (WHRS) installations on ships to reduce CO₂ emissions and improve ships’ engine efficiency. The economic assessment of WHRS installations in the shipping sector is not widely covered in the literature. A reason for this might be that the conventional financial evaluation of sensitive choices is commonly done through capital budgeting methods, which are not flexible enough to integrate future changes in fuel prices and long-term aspects of other costs. Thus, this work evaluates the WHRS investment using the classical budgeting instruments as well as the real-options approach (a more sophisticated approach) to accommodate the presumed expected future changes in the volatile maritime markets. Following the methodology of triangulation, three case studies of ships with varying operational conditions empirically validate the result to depict the practical use of the real-options evaluation method in investment assessment. The capital budgeting analysis reveals that the investment in maritime WHRS technology is only economically favorable under certain frame conditions projected in the work that shows a more realistic assessment of the project.

To reduce the Sulphur emission from shipping and ensure clean shipping, a number of Sulphur Emission Control Areas (SECA) were enforced in special areas around the globe. From 2015, in SECA, ship owners are not allowed to use fuel with more than 0.1% Sulphur content. One of the major concerns for the SECA regulation is that maritime stakeholders have had to take into consideration the costs as well as the tolerable risks of their compliance investment options. Besides that, low freight rates have increased the competition and had caused financial pressure on ship owners so that lower capital reserves and low credibility levels limit the manoeuvring space for investment activities. The indications from BSR after 2015 showed that the low fuel price has eased the economic effects of the SECA regulation and as a result, most ship owners have delayed their investment decisions. Even though the postponement of emission abatement techniques seems to have reduced the compliance expenses for SECA, they, however, did not improve the position of shipowners relative to their competitors. Consequently, new policy instruments to stimulate innovation, to raise competitiveness and to comply with the new environmental regulations are needed. It would have been easier to hedge fuel price volatility and offer maritime logistics services for a lower price, but to be able to ensure sustainable results in long-term, maritime stakeholders must be ready to device astute strategies that can propel them to unparalleled advantage. This research first appraised the investment risks and payback period associated with the scrubber using different capital budgeting methods. It further illustrated the Maritime Energy Contracting (MEC) model as a market mechanism for the delivery of a cost-effective emission reduction using the scrubber technology as well as an instrument to realise a competitive advantage for ship operators. The results are empirically validated by case studies from BSR.

Since the introduction of the Sulphur Emission Control Areas (SECA) regulations in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) in 2015, the BSR has witnessed high compliance rate. However, a closer look to the situation reveals that the currently preferred compliance strategies depend on low oil price where ship owners shun investments in abatement technologies which may lead into an economic trap in the event of the oil price increase. The research considers incentive provisions for maritime investors who make investment decisions related to clean shipping and maritime fuel management. Traditionally, the financial assessments of these decisions are based on capital budgeting methods comprising cash flow analyses and net present value calculations. The findings reveal that the Real-Option approach represents a more realistic, reliable and promising method for the evaluation of abatement projects, especially under uncertainty and high volatility in material resource markets. The results can be applied to the evaluation of all projects in the maritime industry that depends on the price variation of the underlying asset during a specific period.

According to the Porter hypothesis, regulations on environmental emissions under certain conditions can promote eco-innovation. This is why the technologic