Impact analysis of ECA policies on ship trajectories and emissions

This study aims to investigate the impact of emission control area (ECA) measures on ship trajectories and emissions of merchant ships. Results show that a part of merchant ships sail outside the ECA water area to avoid using more expensive low-sulfur fuel. The implementation of stricter ECA policies could reduce the SO_x emissions by 31.24%-42.67% for three merchant ship types. It is found that the proportion of ship voyages outside the ECA waters could increase by 4.77%-9.44% after the implementation of stricter ECA policies. Three logit regression models are established subsequently to estimate the occurrence probability of ECA evasion behavior. Results show that the evasion probabilities of merchant ships could increase with the ship size, the ship voyage distance as well as the price gaps of marine gasoline oil (MGO) with respect to high sulfur fuel oil (HSFO).