Strategies of stakeholders’ selection of shore-to-ship power in China

Abstract

In the context of the global energy crisis and environmental degradation, ports are not only important hubs connecting water and land transportation but also major sources of energy consumption and environmental pollution. How to promote the transformation of ports to green and achieve sustainable development of ports has become the focus of attention in the world. As a major shipping country in the world, China attaches great importance to the issue of air pollutant emissions in port areas and has issued a series of policies on shore-to-ship power in recent years, but due to the lack of endogenous market dynamics, port, and shipping enterprises are not willing to use shore power, and the development of shore power technology is severely restricted. In the research of shore-to-ship power propulsion countermeasures, the existing methods mostly target a single subject and are mostly limited to a static perspective, focusing more on qualitative analysis, while lacking the idea of system modeling. Based on the interactions of the stakeholders involved in the promotion of shore-to-ship power, a game model of strategic choices of the stakeholders, namely the government, the port enterprise, and the shipping companies, is constructed based on evolutionary game theory. For obtaining the benefits matrix and the expected return of the stakeholders under various choices, the parameters in the game model are given. The stability theorem of differential equations is used to find the equilibriums of the choices’ games, and the stability of each equilibrium is judged. The evolution mechanism of the strategic choices of all the stakeholders for promoting shore-to-ship power is analyzed through system dynamics simulation in Matlab. The results show that the strategic choices of the government, the port enterprise, and the shipping companies affect each other greatly. Government policies have leading roles in the strategic choices of both port enterprises and shipping companies. An optimal fee range for shore power usage can encourage the growth of the shore-to-ship power system.