CO2 emission projection for Arctic shipping: A system dynamics approach

Abstract As the Arctic route has shown its potential for Europe-North Asia trade, the number of ships across Arctic route is surging. However, CO2 emissions generated by ships would harm the regional environment. Thus, how to quantify the CO2 emissions brought by ships for the present stage and future is critical for Arctic environment governance. As shipping emissions are determined by economic, political, environmental and operational factors, little research has been done to estimate CO2 emission from a systematical way. This paper proposed a System Dynamics (SD) model that incorporates those comprehensive factors simultaneously for Arctic shipping CO2 emission projection. The Northern Sea Route (NSR) and the ships sail across NSR are selected for estimation. 12 scenarios with different fuel usage conditions and ship speeds have been set to investigate the trend of CO2 emissions. Results show that when under the BAU scenario, the overall shipping CO2 emission on the NSR by 2050 will be 5506149 tons, which is 1.76 times of the emission level in 2020. Switching to cleaner fuels (such as LNG) and slow steaming are effective ways of emission reduction based on the simulation results. The conclusions can facilitate policy makers in making emission reduction decision.