Minimizing Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Ships Using a Pareto Multi-Objective Optimization Approach

To confront climate change, decarbonization strategies must change the global economy. According to statements made as part of the European Green Deal, maritime transport should also become drastically less polluting. As a result, the price of transport must reflect the impact it has on the environment and on health.

In such a framework, the purpose of this paper is to suggest a novel method for minimizing emissions from ships, based on so-called Pareto multi-objective optimization. For a given voyage by a ship, the problem is to minimize emissions on the one hand and minimize fuel consumption or passage time on the other. Minimizing emissions is considered as the preferred objective. Therefore, the objective of minimizing fuel consumption or passage time needs to be reformulated as a constraint. Solving such a problem consists of finding most favourable path and speed for the ship and satisfying the optimization criteria.

Relatively new systems such as hybrid diesel–electric systems have the potential to offer significant emissions benefits. A hybrid power supply utilizes the maximum efficiency of the direct mechanical drive and the flexibility of a combination of combustion power from the prime mover and stored power from energy storage from an electrical supply, at part load and overload.

A new report by the American Bureau of Shipping suggests that maritime transport is likely to meet the International Maritime Organization’s target by 2030, solely by using current technology and operational measures. However, this would not be enough to attain the target of reducing CO2 emissions by 2050 by at least 50% compared to 2008. New technologies and operational methods must be applied.