How do economies of density in container handling operations affect ships’ time and emissions in port? Evidence from Norwegian container terminals

Efficient port services are prerequisites for competitive and sustainable maritime transports. This paper makes advances in studying the determinants of the time that ships spend in port and the associated emissions to air. We estimate a production model for cargo handling based on a unique dataset containing each port of call at the largest container terminals in Norway in 2014. In turn, we use auxiliary engine emission factors to estimate particulate matter and nitrogen oxide emissions from ships at berth, to determine how the corresponding damage costs of air pollution vary with container throughput, location, and terminal investments. We find that Norwegian container terminals operate under increasing returns to density. Small ships that unload few containers are far from reaping economies of density, leading to high marginal time requirements for container handling and consequently high marginal external costs. From a Pigouvian taxation perspective, port charges should therefore be regressive in the number of containers handled. Moreover, we find that the external costs of maritime transports are severely understated when port operations are ignored. Our model allows determining the marginal productivities of port facilities. Thereby, it is instrumental in designing port charges that are diversified according to the quantity of containers handled and the service quality (i.e., the speed of handling operations). Regarding contextual factors, we find that establishing high-frequent liner services improves the ship working rate, while simultaneous calls at a terminal impede productivity. The type of container (loading/unloading; empty/laden) also appears to influence the duration of ship working.     

Electric versus conventional vehicles: social costs and benefits in France

This article compares the social costs of electric vehicles with those of conventional, thermal vehicles for typical passenger use in the Ile-de-France region (Greater Paris), a case of particular interest because nearly 80% of the electricity is generated by nuclear power plants. A four-seat electric car is compared to a new conventional car of the same make and model; for the latter both the gasoline and the diesel version are considered because almost half of new car sales in France are diesel. These results are also compared to typical existing diesel and gasoline vehicles in the current French fleet. The methodology developed by the ExternE (External Costs of Energy) Project of the European Commission is used to estimate the costs associated with atmospheric pollution due to power plants, refineries and tail pipe emissions. Our discussion of externalities is limited to air pollution thus excluding others such as costs associated with noise or accidents. Our results imply that the external costs are large and significant, even when one considers the uncertainties. If internalized by government regulations, these externalities can render the total cost of an electric vehicle more competitive with that of currently available thermal vehicles in large urban centers if the electricity is produced by sources with low pollution. However, the current generation electric vehicles are so expensive that internalization of pollution damage would not give it a very clear advantage.     

A demand model for recreational travel

A model is developed to describe and to predict the patterns of regional recreational travel. The model is designed in such a manner to allow its calibration and use without the need to conduct extensive travel surveys in a large region. To allow its use for prediction, the model is based on a causal structure and attempts to derive recreational travel demand from behavioural variables. The main hypothesis of the model is that the amount of recreational travel a recreation area attracts is affected by the accessibility of this area to points of demand potential and by its attractiveness relative to the recreation areas.

The calibration is founded on actual data on recreational travel to national forests in California, U.S.A. It is found in the calibration that accessibility to demand potential is the single most important determinant of recreational travel attraction. A simple relationship is derived to relate travel to each national forest to the relative accessibility of the forest. The model is calibrated and statistically validated.

It is suggested that when constructing travel demand models simplicity be sought, even at the risk of the loss of some explanatory power. In the calibration of such models statistical significant is more important than the ability to reproduce observed patterns.     

Effect of a speed reduction of containerships in response to higher energy costs in Sulphur Emission Control Areas

The objective of this paper is to explore the possible consequences of the future low-sulphur fuel requirements in Sulphur Emission Control Areas (SECA) on vessel speed, from the standpoint of the container shipping industry. Rational energy use, speed reduction, and revenues are closely related in the container shipping sector because speed reductions may provide substantial energy and cost savings. The operators could consider reducing their speed in SECA in order to save on fuel that will become relatively expensive. However, to maintain a weekly frequency without adding new ships, such a behaviour implies that the required speed at sea outside the SECA area increases. This paper aims to investigate if such a difference in speed is cost-effective, and if the increase in speed outside SECA may result in an increase in CO₂ emissions of the total cycle. We propose a cost model that estimates the cost-minimising combination of speeds inside and outside SECA, and the resulting CO₂ emissions of the liner service. Applying this model to representative liner services serving North Europe, we find that differentiating speed accordingly slightly decreases total costs and increases CO₂ emissions in a similar way. The results are sensitive to the price of low-sulphur fuels, the part of the cycle in SECA and the number of ships deployed in the service.     

Public regulation and passengers importance in port infrastructure costs

Because ports are conceived and designed mainly to be the transfer point of various types of freight, passengers tend to be forgotten in the analysis of port costs. In this paper first we investigate the importance of passengers in port infrastructure costs by means of a multi-output cost function estimated from 20 annual observations (1986-2005) for 26 Spanish Port Authorities. Results show that, although a passenger weights on average less than one tenth of a ton, he or she represents as much as two tons of solid bulk and about three tons of containerized general cargo in terms of marginal costs. Secondly, we compare the marginal costs of different cargoes with their price caps established by law. Results suggest that some type of second best pricing is induced by present regulation.     

Fuel demand,road transport pollution emissions and residents’ health losses in the transitional China

In recent years, China’s rapid economic growth resulted in serious air pollution, which caused substantial losses to economic development and residents’ health. In particular, the road transport sector has been blamed to be one of the major emitters. During the past decades, fluctuation in the international oil prices has imposed significant impacts on the China’s road transport sector. Therefore, inspired by Li and Zhou (2005), we propose an assumption that China’s provincial economies are independent “economic entities”. Based on this assumption, we investigate the China’s road transport fuel (i.e., gasoline and diesel) demand system by using the panel data of all 31 Chinese provinces except Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. To connect the fuel demand system and the air pollution emissions, we propose the concept of pollution emissions elasticities to estimate the air pollution emissions from the road transport sector, and residents’ health losses by a simplified approach consisting of air pollution concentrations and health loss assessment models under different scenarios based on real-world oil price fluctuations. Our framework, to the best of our knowledge, is the first attempt to address the transmission mechanism between the fuel demand system in road transport sector and residents’ health losses in the transitional China.     

Estimating the environmental costs of port related emissions: The case of Kaohsiung

This study estimates the emission costs of ships and trucks in the Port of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, focusing mainly on particular matter and volatile organic compounds. By calculating annual ship and truck emissions we find that the major contributors are tankers, container ships and bulk ships and trucks. Using a bottom-up methodology, the combined environmental costs of ships and trucks are estimated to be over $123 million per year.     

Emission control areas: More or fewer?

As the global sulphur limit implemented by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the further development of sulphur emission reduction technologies, the effects of Emission Control Areas (ECAs) on reducing the sulphur emissions from ships will be reduced gradually. To explore the necessity of ECAs in the near future, this paper introduces the fictitious sulphur emission permit allocated to shipping carriers for our considered region. We propose an ECA location problem, which determines the location of ECAs in order to minimize the impact of sulphur emissions on human health, while satisfying the constraint on the fictitious sulphur emission permit. A mixed-integer linear programming model is proposed for our investigated problem. Numerical experiments are carried out by using our proposed model applied to China and Africa, where the sulphur emissions at different sites are estimated via the fuel consumption calculated by collecting data from liner carriers. Results show that, for the case of China, the Bohai Rim, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta have a high probability for establishing ECAs. For the case of Africa, the Guinea Bay and South Africa have a high probability for establishing ECAs.     

Health externalities of ship air pollution at port – Piraeus port case study

This paper is employing the well-known methodology of impact pathway approach to assess the external costs in human health from ship air pollution at port areas. The passenger port of Piraeus, Greece is the scenery of the study. Piraeus port is in the vicinity of the greater Athens metropolitan area where almost half of the country’s population lives. Hence, this port is the central hub of the Greek coastal passenger ship system which connects the islands of the Aegean Sea with land and is characterized by heavy ship traffic. The case study presented in this paper assesses the annual external cost in human health from air emissions produced by all passenger ships and cruise ships calling the port of Piraeus. Health cost from ships at port has been estimated at both local (Athens metropolitan area) and regional level (entire territory of Greece). Results show that higher costs occur at the local level. The dominant pollutants creating this cost are particulate matter (PM_2.5, and PM₁₀). Overall, the results indicate that the health impact of Piraeus’s passenger port emissions is not negligible; however the cost of PM₁₀ is considerably lower than the corresponded cost deriving from the land based industries of the Athens regional area for which comparison has been available.     

External costs from vessel emissions at port: a review of the methodological and empirical state of the art†

The accurate calculation of external costs from vessel emissions and shipping (as it happens with transport) strongly depends on parameters such as location, the time of the day and vessel operative. Thus, the use of a full bottom-up approach and granular traffic details is suggested. The latter may represent a substantial improvement in the resolution of shipping activity, energy demand, emissions and cost data being the latter essential for better regulations. The revised work identifies the Impact Pathway Approach (IPA) as the best-practice bottom-up methodology for calculating site-specific external costs derived from shipping air emissions. It has been widely adopted, among others, over major European studies (CAFE, BeTa, NEEDS and HEATCO). Also, it shows that due to costly and complex requirements of creating a shipping and harbour-specific bottom-up approach, external cost calculation based on tonne per euro factors obtained from European Studies (top-down approach) has been widely accepted. Moreover, methodological improvements and the possible achievement of refined estimations (IPA) dedicated to ports and shipping are strongly suggested, as these may improve information quality used for environmental policy and measures that contribute to the internalisation of externality costs.