Evasion strategy for a coastal cargo ship with unpunctual arrival penalty under sulfur emission regulation

Zhijia Tan, Ming Zhang, Shuai Shao, Jinpeng Liang and Dian Sheng

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 2022, vol. 164, issue C

Abstract: To comply with the sulfur emission control area (ECA) regulation, a ship can burn expensive MGO (marine gas oil) inside ECA but relatively cheap VLSFO (very low sulfur fuel oil) outside ECA. This paper investigates a coastal cargo ship’s evasion strategy, which refers to a detour decision that decreases its sailing distance within ECA and increases its sailing distance outside ECA to save fuel costs. To this end, a voyage cost minimization model is proposed to determine the optimal sailing trajectory and speed profile inside and outside ECA. A distinguishing feature is that the ship’s sailing time is endogenously determined, depending on the penalties imposed on early and late arrivals. The necessary and sufficient conditions are obtained so that the ship operators can quickly determine whether ECA evasion can save voyage costs. It is demonstrated that the evasion triggering condition depends on the fuel price ratio of VLSFO to MGO and the relative position between the ports and the ECA boundary. Compared with non-evasion, the ship operators have less incentive to arrive punctually under evasion. The proposed models are applied to compare the evasion behavior of ships operating in the coastal ECAs of China and the US. The resultant economic and environmental impacts of ship’s evasion behavior are further discussed from the government’s perspective. The numerical results suggest significant differences arise due to the different widths of the two ECAs.

Keywords: Emission control areas; Evasion strategy; Trajectory and speed optimization; Arrival penalty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1366554522002058
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transe:v:164:y:2022:i:c:s1366554522002058

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600244/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600244/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.tre.2022.102818

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review is currently edited by W. Talley

More articles in Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().