Driving the Green Transition of the Maritime Industry through Clean Technology Adoption and Environmental Policies

The climate change crisis is arguably the biggest contemporary challenge facing the global community, and reducing emissions is an issue of paramount importance for stakeholders in the maritime industry. The scope of this thesis focuses on two key pillars related to the green transition of international shipping, namely, clean technology adoption and environmental policies. The overarching objective of the Ph.D. thesis is to examine thoroughly the interplay between clean technology adoption and environmental policies to drive the green transition of the maritime industry. The three research papers of this dissertation concomitantly address the overarching objective from both policy and managerial perspectives. The first study (Chapter 2) focuses on the heterogeneous impacts of technology and operational levers on environmental performance in the context of a mandatory environmental policy in the maritime industry. The study develops hypotheses concerning the impact of a key set of levers and empirically tests them with statistical methods. The empirical analysis shows that the relationship between technology and operational levers and environmental performance is complex, and effects can vary across the range of environmental performance. The second study (Chapter 3) examines the impact of an emission trading scheme on the decision to invest in clean technologies in an environment with regulatory and demand uncertainties. The study develops a multi-stage decision model in a stochastic environment and derives analytical results describing the optimal investment policy over time. In addition, the analytical results highlight that an environment with increased uncertainties has a substantial effect on the costs of regulation and the value of actively managing the investment decision. The third study (Chapter 4) focuses on assessing the potential for energy efficiency improvements in ship designs across the different shipping sectors. Departing from the rationale for energy efficiency in marine policies, the study develops a general framework for comparing the energy efficiency of ship designs and derives best-practice benchmarks by applying nonparametric benchmarking methods. The empirical results suggest that the situational contexts for energy efficiency improvements significantly vary across shipping sectors. Based on the results, the study provides policy implications for existing and additional policy measures to foster the green transition of the maritime industry.