To main content

Reducing fuel emissions by optimizing speed on shipping routes

Abstract

Fuel consumption and emissions on a shipping route are typically a cubic function of speed. Given a shipping route consisting of a sequence of ports with a time window for the start of service, substantial savings can be achieved by optimizing the speed of each leg. This problem is cast as a non-linear continuous program, which can be solved by a non-linear programming solver. We propose an alternative solution methodology, in which the arrival times are discretized and the problem is solved as a shortest path problem on a directed acyclic graph. Extensive computational results confirm the superiority of the shortest path approach and the potential for fuel savings on shipping routes.

Category

Academic article

Language

English

Author(s)

Affiliation

  • Norwegian University of Science and Technology
  • Montreal HEC Business School, University of Montreal
  • SINTEF

Year

2010

Published in

Journal of the Operational Research Society

ISSN

0160-5682

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan

Volume

61

Issue

3

Page(s)

523 - 529

View this publication at Cristin