ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Solutions for Ocean and Coastal Systems
This article is part of the Research TopicOcean Negative Carbon Emissions Technologies and Ecological RisksView all 3 articles
Synergies between government, ports, shipping companies, and power companies
Provisionally accepted
Xiyan Song1,2*
Suyong Zhang2- 1Shanghai Maritime University, pudong, China
- 2Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The IMO has taken proactive steps to promote carbon emission reductions in the maritime industry as the severity of global warming increases. As a result, several nations and regions have made developing shore electrical technology a top priority. Through the establishment of a four-party evolutionary game model comprising the government, ports, shipping corporations, and power companies, this article seeks to explore the promotion of shore electricity for sustainable port development. The model's goal is to investigate how each stakeholder makes decisions and interacts with one another in the process of promoting shore energy. We find multiple stable equilibrium points and their corresponding criteria by doing a stability analysis. We also conduct a sensitivity analysis to evaluate the effects on each participant of the magnitude of government incentives and related expenses. This investigation leads us to three important conclusions: First, all stakeholders' decision-making processes are greatly influenced by government policies. Second, economic factors limit the adoption of shore electricity technology and have a direct impact on the strategic decisions made by all parties. Finally, incentives and cooperation among the stakeholders are shown to be successful strategies for attaining low-carbon growth in the shipping industry. Ports and shipping businesses are more willing to use shore electrical technology when government support is available, and power corporations are more willing to make investments.
Keywords: Shore electricity technology, carbon emissions, Shipping industry, Four-party evolutionary game, sensitivity analysis
Received: 22 Jul 2025; Accepted: 28 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Song and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiyan Song
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.