China's Port Carbon Emission Reduction: A Study of Emission-Driven Factors

Ports offer an effective way to facilitate the global economy. However, massive carbon emission during port operating aggravates the atmospheric pollution in port cities. Capturing characteristics of port carbon emission is vital to reduce GHG (greenhouse gas) in the maritime realm as well as to achieve China's carbon neutral objective. In this work, an integrated framework is proposed for exploring the driving factors of China ports' emissions combined with stochastic effects on population, affluence and technology regression (STIRPAT), Global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) and multiple linear regression (MLR). The port efficiency is estimated for each port and the potential driving factors of carbon emission are explored. The results indicate that port carbon emissions have a strong connection with port throughput, productivity, containerization and intermodal transshipment. It is worth noting that the containerization ratio and port physical facility with fossil-free energy improvement have positively correlated with carbon emissions. However, the specific value of waterborne transshipment shows a complex impact on carbon dioxide emission as the ratio increases. The findings reveal that China port authorities need to improve containerization ratio and develop intermodal transportation; meanwhile, it is responsible for port authorities to update energy use and improve energy efficiency in ways to minimize the proportion of non-green energy consumption in accordance with optimizing port operation management including peak shaving and intelligent management systems under a new horizon of clean energy and automatic equipment.