Abstract
Since 2020, ocean-going vessels must comply with the International Maritime Organization (IMO) mandate to reduce the sulfur content of marine fuels (outside emission control areas) to no more than 0.5%. This paper analyzes the cost of different approaches for the U.S. fleet, which has special cost considerations because of the Jones Act, to comply with the regulation. We perform a cost analysis for a suite of options for compliance by U.S. shippers, including low-sulfur petroleum-based fuels and alternative fuels (liquefied natural gas [LNG], ammonia, methanol, and ethanol). The cost analysis compares the average annual costs (capital and fuel) out to 2050 of each compliance approach for a representative U.S. tanker and U.S. containership under alternative scenarios with regard to fuel prices, policy, and technology innovation. We also consider the sensitivity of results with respect to vessel age, interest rates, and scrubber fuel efficiency penalties. We find the least costly compliance strategies across future fuel price scenarios and vessel types. The lower-cost compliance pathways typically deliver limited improvement in CO2 emissions which makes them riskier in the context of potential more ambitious emissions targets by IMO. This paper is derived from a technical report (ORNL/SPR-2021/2088) first prepared for the U.S. Maritime Administration.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 674-689 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Transportation Research Record |
| Volume | 2678 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 2024 |
Funding
This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The U.S. government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for U.S. government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( https://www.energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ). The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The work described in this document was under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation Maritime Administration.
Keywords
- air quality
- alternate fuels
- climate change
- marine