Energy efficiency and green solutions in sustainable development: evidence from the Norwegian maritime industry

Abstract

The maritime industry plays a special role in Norway. In recent years, it became subject to increasingly stronger requirements to reduce emissions. However, the most important is that the Norwegian maritime industry in several areas can deliver and further develop technology and products that provide lower emissions, nationally and globally. Going forward, technology development will be more important with time. Thus, it is important to find out what impact it will have on the industry’s sustainable development and estimate the efficiency of new technologies. This paper primarily aims to find a new optimization tool, which allows monitoring progress in the maritime industry towards sustainable development. The present study reveals many new possible zero-emission solutions in the maritime industry, such as battery-electric architectures, ammonia, hydrogen, biofuel, and liquefied natural gas (LNG), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), autonomous ships, etc. Moreover, it was highlighted that without active coordination between governance, academia, and industry, it is impossible to achieve international climate commitments and associated targets for reducing the emissions in the maritime industry. In addition, in this study, a twofold model was proposed: the first part is the calculation of the Sustainable Development Index (SDI), and the last one is mathematical modeling, where the optimization variable carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and Sustainable Development Index (SDI) should be maximized. The investigation results prove that the model should be tested, and further research in this area is needed.