Green berth and yard space allocation under carbon tax policy in tidal ports

The green and sustainable development of ports is an issue of great concern to governments, industries, and academia. Carbon emissions near ports mainly come from ships and trucks. The effective allocation of resources and the implementation of a carbon tax policy may reduce carbon emissions near ports. Therefore, this paper investigates an integrated optimization problem of berths, quay cranes, and yard spaces allocation for tidal ports with channel capacity constraints under carbon tax policy. A mathematical model that aims to minimize the sum of the total carbon emission costs and total penalty costs is proposed. To solve the model efficiently, a heuristic algorithm based on the sequential method is developed. Numerical experiments are performed to verify the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. Based on the results of numerical experiments, some potentially useful managerial implications are outlined.