Marginal abatement cost curves for CO2 emission reduction from shipping to 2050

Abstract

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has stated an ambition to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050 and new regulations are under development to achieve this. To inform decisions on GHG regulations, this study has modeled the CO₂ emission abatement potentials and costs towards 2050 for all ships above 400 gross tons. We explore CO₂ reduction pathways based on marginal abatement cost curves (MACC) for 2030, 2040 and 2050. MACC is an important tool to assess the potential impact of regulations and can inform current policy debates as well as ship owners that need to develop their decarbonization strategies. Compared to previous work, we provide global MACCs taking into account the latest technologies and cost development, including alternative fuels. The updated MACC is based on more than 50 state-of-the-art abatement measures, 10 fuel systems and 8 fuels. The results indicate that the revised IMO GHG strategy ambition of 20–30 % GHG emission reduction in 2030, relative to 2008, can be reached at a marginal cost of 50–100 USD/tCO₂; 70–80 % emission reduction in 2040 can be achieved at 230–240 USD/tCO₂ and net-zero emissions in 2050 at a marginal cost of 300 USD/tCO₂. The two inputs which have the highest impact on the results are the future cost of carbon-neutral fuels and growth in seaborne trade.