Money for maritime related research

Two different research projects focusing on the maritime sector has received support from the Swedish innovation agency Vinnova. One project deals with environmental control charges and incentives for ports while the other project focus on supply chain economics. Several parties are involved in the projects, among them the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg and IVL, Swedish Environmental Research Institute, both members of Lighthouse.

Environmental Governance fees and incentive for ports

The project is based on an interdisciplinary approach, examining how differentiated environmental charges and incentives in ports can reduce the environmental impact of the different modes of transport serving the ports. The project's main focus is on the local level to improve air quality in the port city, but also climate effects are included. The long term goal of this work is to promote a shift to more environmentally efficient transport, vehicles, ships, technologies and alternative fuels, which is an extremely important task for achieving our environmental and climate targets for the transport sector. The project includes IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute (IVL), Gothenburg University (GU), Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI), the Port of Gothenburg, Trelleborg Port and Ports of Stockholm.

The project addresses both incentives and fees for land and sea transport to and from ports. Examples of incentives are given priority, when entering the port, for trucks with higher Euro emission standard and fees may vary according to the type of fuel used by ships and trucks. An arrival fee based on the environmental performance of the trucks can be a very powerful instrument for reducing road traffic emissions in the urban environment. The purpose of the contributions and the incentives is to create conditions for sustainable growth by affecting shipping lines, trucking companies and rail operators to choose eco-efficient solutions

Supply Chain Finance: New roles for the logistics and transport industry

Supply chains are obviously not stronger than its weakest link and thus supply chain efficiency needs to be studied from a holistic systems perspective in order to create visibility for the transport sector to purposefully meet the competitive and environmental challenges faced. This project is part of a broader research effort at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, which adopts such a holistic systems perspective within the framework of supply chain finance (SCF).

The project aims to contribute to the political transport goals by analysing and developing new and innovative systems and procedures for integrating flows along supply chains. In particular, the project brings together logistics, finance and law to address the functionality goal at a business level by focusing on platforms for electronic information sharing as a means for increased supply chain efficiency.

The two projects will be implemented over two years starting in December 2016.