Effects of COVID-19 on passenger shipping activities and emissions: empirical analysis of passenger ships in Danish waters

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the analysis of the COVID-19 effects on passenger shipping in Danish waters as an example and aims to analyse the differences in passenger vessel activities and emissions before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. Two sets of Automatic Identification System (AIS) data for the passenger ships sailing in Danish waters associated with the whole year respectively for 2020 and 2019 are used for a comprehensive evaluation of the passenger shipping activities in the region by means of the analysis of variance and bottom-up emission models. A comparison of those results based on the two datasets shows that the COVID-19 pandemic has a major impact on cruise ships, with a significant reduction in the number of ships, average speed, and average draught. In contrast, the pandemic has a smaller impact on ferry-pax only and ferry-ro pax vessels. The effects can also be seen from the fact that, after the COVID-19 outbreak, SOx emissions from cruise ships, ferry-pax only and ferry-ro pax vessels were reduced by 50.71%, 0.51% and 0.82%, respectively. This investigation provides an important reference for policy makers in the marine environment sector.