Estimating the Cost of Greening of Shortsea Vessels and the Market Potential of Green Retrofit

Abstract

Shortsea shipping (SSS) has attracted the interest of researchers and policy-makers as a viable transport alternative against mainly road haulage. Despite policy initiatives, SSS has not increased its market share nor attracted fresh interest in the market, so the fleet is ageing. Lately, due to the de-carbonization effort of the maritime industry and generally of greening the economy, SSS becomes an interesting trans-port alternative that deserves further research. This work focuses on the cost of decarbonising the global SSS fleet with a parallel interest on the EU fleet. This cost estimation is based on recent publications, and considers ships expected to be ordered and demolished; for the existing fleet the cost of retrofitting with greening technology is also estimated. Based on reasonable assumptions, the potential market of wind-assisted technologies is estimated too. This work is an outcome of the WASP Interreg project.