Environmental strategy in the Swedish shipping industry The drivers of becoming proactive

Abstract

There is an increased rate of the legislation being implemented to reduce emissions and impact from the shipping sector around the world. These legislations have been or are about to be implemented either worldwide or in certain areas of the world. The focus of this thesis was to investigate the impact these have on the Swedish shipping sector. The legislations of interest were the different Emission control areas, the Energy efficiency design index and the Ballast water treatment convention. The aim was to be able to answer what strategies and activities that Swedish shipping companies use to handle the increased pressure on their fleets and operations. The results were gathered through semi-structured interviews with companies operating in Sweden. These interviews aimed to find what strategies are used, what critique exists against aforementioned legislation and how it affects the area. To generate an overview of the results, a thematic analysis method was used to create codes and themes describing the gathered data. Mainly this method and approach lead to a result where the shipping sector in Sweden can be seen to be in an anticipatory state. The customer demand for environmental procedures is low and hence the companies cannot charge premium prices for their product to promote innovation. It is rather the increased rate of legislation that drives companies to be more proactive and create new tools to lower emissions or create energy efficiency. Some critique was also mentioned, especially towards the Energy efficiency design index which was mentioned to not be well suited for certain segments of the sector.