Shore power deployment problem—a case study of a Chinese container shipping network

Abstract

Shipping emissions, especially those in port areas, have become one of the main concerns of the maritime industry. Shore power has been recognized as a promising way to alleviate the problem. However, shore power has not been extensively adopted in China. Therefore, from the government’s point of view, this paper conducts a case study of the shore power deployment problem based on the real container shipping network of China, including the Port of Hong Kong. In addition to the basic case, we, also, conduct numerical experiments with different budgets, to analyze its influence on the optimal subsidy plan and cost–benefit analysis. The results give two useful managerial insights: (i) it might be unnecessary to spend a large amount of the budget on subsidization, and (ii) the subsidy expenditure needs to be considered together with the final bunker reduction, while creating the budget.