IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/retrec/v113y2025ics0739885925001192.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How can long-distance battery-powered container ships stack up? A speculative Asia-Europe illustration

Author

Listed:
  • Wiskich, Anthony

Abstract

Are batteries too costly and insufficiently energy-dense for long-distance shipping? We consider a container ship on a round trip between Asia and Europe under two speculative assumptions. First, in addition to a battery-on-container-ship (“on-ship”) approach, we study an “off-ship” concept where a dedicated battery vessel can power the ship en route. Second, we allow (dis)connection of battery vessels and charging at sea (stops). We describe an economic model that optimises ship speed, number of sea stops, battery capacities and battery vessel adoption for a hybrid (fuel/battery) container ship. Our main insights: (i) the off-ship approach allows greater flexibility and partial electrification at higher battery costs, (ii) optimal speeds increase and vary depending on the route segment with battery-powered propulsion, and (iii) battery uptake is more sensitive to battery costs than energy density. We hope these insights promote research into the technical feasibility of the off-ship approach.

Suggested Citation

  • Wiskich, Anthony, 2025. "How can long-distance battery-powered container ships stack up? A speculative Asia-Europe illustration," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:retrec:v:113:y:2025:i:c:s0739885925001192
    DOI: 10.1016/j.retrec.2025.101636
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0739885925001192
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.retrec.2025.101636?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • Q41 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Demand and Supply; Prices
    • Q42 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Alternative Energy Sources
    • Q47 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy Forecasting
    • R40 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - General
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:retrec:v:113:y:2025:i:c:s0739885925001192. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/620614/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.