| Greenhouse Gas emissions (GHG) produced by human activities have aggravated the global warming, the resulting environmental problems has been a serious threat to human survival and development, and attract wide attention of international community. In the past, shipping was considered to be the most clean and environmentally friendly mode of transportation, however, the increasing in the amount of ships and the development of large ships in recent years have rapidly increased the greenhouse gases emission of the whole shipping industry. Research reports show that the amount of Greenhouse Gas emissions from maritime transport is1.046billion tons, which represent3.3%of the world’s total GHG, if there are no actions have been taken, it is forecasted to increase by150%-250%by2050which will represent12-18%of the world’s total GHG. Shipping industry needs to take effective measures to reduce shipping GHG and ensure the sustainable development of shipping industry.As the leader of shipping GHG emission reduction, IMO has done a lot of efforts on emission reduction, the implement of technical and operation measures such as "Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI)" and "Ship Energy Efficiency Operational" have done certain contribution, but the more effective market-based measures to reduce emissions has stalled because of the flaws in the system settings. Therefore, how to introduce market-based measures into the shipping industry is still an unsolved problem and is being actively discussed in the shipping industry.This study aims to design a new Global Maritime Emission Trading Scheme (GMETS) based on the life cycle assessment of ship carbon footprint, aiming to achieve higher reduction targets for the abatement of GHG emissions from ships. Combining a carbon tax and a trading system, GMETS provides appropriate incentives to ship owners in order to reduce their emissions at the lowest cost. The main research results include the following points:(1) This paper not only gives a summary on the development and the evolution of shipping emission reduction measures proposed by IMO, EU and China, but also analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of current three types of measures, especially for the market-based measures. (2) This thesis optimizes the ship carbon emission life cycle assessment framework and elaborates the development of the life cycle theory, definition, main characteristics and basic steps; Through analyzing the feasibility of implying life cycle theory on ship carbon emission evaluation to optimize the assessment on the complex system of ship; This paper also improve the systemic of the evaluation method and the authenticity of the data to ensure the credibility of the result.(3) This paper designs a new Global Maritime Emission Trading Scheme based on the life cycle assessment of ship carbon footprint for the first time. Combining a carbon tax and a trading system, GMETS will avoid the problems such as low incentives of ship owners, no vitality of the market, avoiding responsibility, quota allocation and so on.The new scheme has strong operability and practical applications.(4) Through the life cycle assessment and experiment on the Xiamen University New Research Vessel, it is proved that the new scheme can be applied in the real market emissions cost passed on to the shipper will just have a minor effect and the ship owners will have a high chance to achieve profit under the framework of GMETS.This study’s biggest innovation point lies in introducing the life cycle theory into maritime emissions trading scheme and ship owners act both as a buyer and a seller of carbon emission as a new suggestion to solve a series of problems. This study hopes to be able to provide decision-making reference for the IMO and the relevant department, in order to promote the market-based measures. At the same time, hope this study can provide a new thought of research method in academic circles for shipping emission reduction. |
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