STUDY ON SIMULATION BASED EVALUATION OF ROUTE AND CARGO SPECIFIC PROJECT FOR INTRODUCING DECARBONIZED SHIPS

Abstract

In recent years, International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted an initial strategy for GHG reduction from ships. Cargo owners, shipping companies, and ship owners have started to consider how to respond to the strategy. The introduction of decarbonized ships is a future direction to fulfil the IMO’s strategy. However, for each route and cargo, the situation is different, and it is necessary to consider the introduction plan of decarbonized ships that is appropriate for each. This paper proposes an evaluation method for the introduction project of decarbonized ships. The method assumes specific route and cargo, and various scenarios of decarbonization technologies, environmental regulations, fuel prices, and infrastructure deployment for alternative fuels, and evaluates costs such as OPEX, CAPEX, and amount of GHG emission based on a simulation of fleet transition aiming to the zero-emissions target time. The method provides a quantitative evaluation of the introduction project to the stakeholders and supports their decision-making. By changing the inputted parameters, sensitivity analysis to consider future uncertainty can be conducted based on the method. As a case study, we assume several types of alternative fuelled ships, and alternative fuel-ready ships, and evaluate the environmental performance and costs of introducing them to iron ore transportation between Australia and Japan. Scenarios of infrastructure deployment for alternative fuels is assumed as well, and by comparison of the cases, the usefulness of the fuels and technologies in each case is discussed.