ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Affairs and Policy
This article is part of the Research TopicChallenges and Opportunities for Decarbonizing the Maritime IndustryView all 11 articles
Mapping the evolution and future prediction of berthing ship CO2 emissions in China
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Transport and Communications, Shanghai Maritime University, pudong, China
- 2College of Ocean Science and Engineering, Shanghai Maritime University, pudong, China
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Rapid expansion of the shipping industry is not only boosting trade and economic growth, but also leading to increased CO2 emissions, which presents substantial challenges to climate change mitigation. Therefore, it is of great significant to simulate the berthing ship emission reduction potential under the context of global change. Based on the spatial-temporal evolution as well as the driving factors of the port ship CO2 emissions, this study predicted the future port ship CO2 emission patterns in China. Results indicated an obvious divergence in CO2 spatial-temporal distributions, and the high-emission areas had shifted from the northern to the southern ports. The volume of waterway transportation, road transportation, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the proportion of the secondary industry were the primary drivers of the port ship CO2 emissions, though the influence degree of each factor varied across different ports. Finally, scenario-based forecasts suggested that advancing ship energy efficiency technologies and formulate robust emission reduction policies were urgently needed to mitigate the environmental impact of port activities.
Keywords: Port, Ship CO2 emission, Spatial-temporal analysis, Driving factor, Scenario analysis
Received: 12 Oct 2025; Accepted: 17 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhu, Ye, Chen, Zhang, Yao and Liu. 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: Enyan Zhu, eyzhu@shmtu.edu.cn
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