Carbon Pricing and Shipping Emission Intensity: Vessel-Level Evidence from the Inclusion of Shipping in the EU ETS

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-758-3_61How to use a DOI?

Keywords

EU ETS; shipping emissions; emission intensity; vessel panel; carbon pricing; MRV

Abstract

In January 2024, the European Union officially included shipping in its Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), creating a quasi-natural experiment for studying how carbon pricing reshapes maritime emissions behaviour. Using vessel-level annual panel data from the EU MRV system over 2018-2024 combined with EEX carbon allowance prices, this paper estimates the causal effect of rising carbon prices on emission intensity through a “carbon price × baseline emissions exposure” interaction strategy with vessel and year fixed effects. Rising carbon prices significantly reduce the emission intensity of high-exposure vessels: the core coefficient is negative at the 1% level and is robust to balanced-panel restrictions, winsorization, alternative baseline definitions, and excluding the pandemic year. Heterogeneity analysis shows container ships, bulk carriers, and tankers respond strongly to price signals, whereas passenger ships do not, indicating that operating mode strongly moderates price transmission. Event-study results reveal that the relative intensity reduction of high-exposure vessels accumulates gradually with the EUA price path and peaks during the 2022-2023 high-price window rather than jumping discretely after 2024. A 1,000-draw permutation test confirms the result is not driven by mechanical correlation. The findings support carbon pricing as an effective decarbonization lever for shipping while highlighting the concentration of cost burdens that policymakers must address.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Shuyu Yang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/08
TI  - Carbon Pricing and Shipping Emission Intensity: Vessel-Level Evidence from the Inclusion of Shipping in the EU ETS
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 7th International Conference on Management Science and Engineering Management (ICMSEM 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 617
EP  - 626
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-758-3_61
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-758-3_61
ID  - Yang2026
ER  -