Optimization of ship speed and fleet deployment under carbon emissions policies for container shipping

Abstract

In this paper, under the consideration of two carbon emissions policies, the issues of optimizing ship speed and fleet deployment for container shipping were addressed. A mixed-integer nonlinear programming model of ship speed and fleet deployment was established with the objective of minimising total weekly operating costs. A simulated annealing algorithm was proposed to solve the problem. An empirical analysis was conducted with the data selected from the benchmark suite. The applicability and effectiveness of the established model and its algorithm are verified by the results. According to the results, two policies of the cap-and-trade programme and the carbon tax can better optimize the results of the ship speed and fleet deployment problem to achieve the goal of reducing carbon emissions. The research remarks in this paper will provide a solution for container shipping companies to make optimized decisions under carbon emissions policies.