Assessment of the shipping decarbonization along the Maritime Silk Road

This paper develops the shipping decarbonization assessment of the Maritime Silk Road (MSR) through green liquefied hydrogen (GLH) and ship retrofitting, including spatial distribution of carbon emissions, additional cost of fuel from oil to GLH, retrofitting cost of all dedicated ships, and capital cost of GLH equipment/infrastructure with a proposed top-down method according to the shipment demand of container, coal, iron ore, crude oil, LNG and LPG. The assessment method includes 240 shipping lines covering 16 main ports with two directions along the MSR and utilizes 22 representative ships active in the region with real ship characteristics. The estimated annual decarbonization cost for the MSR is approximately 9,711.8 million USD, encompassing the additional fuel cost (GLH vs. oil), ship retrofitting, and port bunkering equipment/infrastructure capital costs. The annual cost saving from avoided carbon emissions is estimated at 700 million USD, sufficient to cover the capital cost of the bunkering equipment/infrastructure.