From black carbon reduction to coordinated fuel adoption on a trans-Arctic shipping corridor

Arctic sea ice loss is opening trans-Arctic routes, but black carbon (BC) from conventional marine fuels amplifies climate risks in ice covered environments. This study evaluates whether lower BC fuel pathways can move from environmental advantage to coordinated deployment on a representative 14,000 km Murmansk-Shanghai corridor. The analysis integrates life cycle assessment (LCA), BC emission inventories, life cycle cost analysis (LCC), a resource–environment–economy (REE) evaluation, and a tripartite evolutionary game involving governments, ports, and shipping enterprises. Relative to heavy fuel oil (HFO) and very-low sulfur fuel oil (VLSFO), LNG and methanol reduce modeled onboard BC mass by 93.9% and 79.0%, respectively. Standard 100-year Global Warming Potential (GWP100) values are 64.68 kg CO 2 -eq per functional unit (FU) for LNG and 70.53 kg for CO 2 -methanol, compared with 81.61 kg for HFO/VLSFO. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) ranks first under Climate Priority and Balanced Development, but its Balanced Development advantage over HFO/VLSFO is only 0.0001 in closeness, with similar first-rank probabilities across 20,000 Monte Carlo draws. None of the 60 baseline scenarios or 12,960 bounded policy combinations achieves high tripartite adoption within 25 years; even ambitious LNG cases with positive payoff gaps fall below the 0.8 adoption threshold. Thus, BC is a useful screening signal, but lower BC alone cannot ensure deployment. Coordinated adoption requires simultaneous cost feasibility, port service returns, and sustained enterprise demand. The framework identifies the conditions under which environmental advantage can or cannot translate into implementation, offering a staged evidence base for Arctic shipping decarbonization policy.