Policy efficiency in maritime decarbonization: the role of emission taxes in energy transition considering the Arctic Sea Route

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a novel framework integrating emission policies with operational decisions in shipping, useful for further research on sectoral decarbonization.

🏢実務担当者:Shipping companies can use the findings on optimal fuel choices and tax thresholds to guide fleet investment and route planning.

🏛政策担当者:Offers concrete tax levels and abatement costs to inform national and international maritime emission regulations.

Shipping companies face pressure to address environmental impacts, including risks of oil spills and air pollution. In particular, the Arctic region is highly sensitive to environmental disturbances, and shipping along the Arctic Sea Route (ASR) may pose greater ecological risks than along conventional Suez Canal routes (SCR). Existing studies on the competition between ASR and SCR have paid limited attention to the joint consideration of environmental emission policies and operational decisions, even though policy interventions can substantially alter optimal sailing speeds, fuel choices, and route competitiveness. To address this gap, this research primarily examines the efficiency of emission policies in maritime transport, comparing the SCR and the alternative ASR. Therefore, a framework integrating environmental policies with operational decision-making, particularly variable optimal sailing speeds under different emission policies, is developed to analyze the trade-off between policy effectiveness and economic viability, incorporating bunkers of very low sulfur fuel oil (VLSFO), liquefied natural gas (LNG), and traditional heavy fuel oil (HFO). This study aims to (1) examine policy implications arising from the imbalance between the policy effectiveness (the government’s side) and economic viability (the shipping companies’ side); (2) promote the use of ASR from an economic-environmental perspective; and (3) provide applicable suggestions on bunker alternatives and energy transition. Regarding the policy suggestion, a moderate tax level tends to preserve the cost advantage of conventional fuels, while sufficiently strong price signals (250 USD/ton in the baseline case) are required to shift incentives toward cleaner alternatives such as LNG. Internalizing the costs of the external environment can make ASR competitive, especially if a unit CO2-equivalent price is below 100 USD/ton for LNG, particularly during warm seasons. Given the current HFO ban, VLSFO emerges as the optimal alternative, with abatement costs reaching a minimum of about −7.0 USD/ton. Its cost-effectiveness stems from its lower sulfur content, which reduces air pollution-related expenditures. This is followed by LNG, which offers the best emission-reduction effectiveness among the three bunkers and benefits most from larger vessel sizes. These findings provide policy-relevant insights into the environmental regulation and the transition toward cleaner marine fuels, including Arctic shipping.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecmx.2026.102088first seen 2026-06-29 05:41:08 · last seen 2026-06-29 05:41:11