Work in progress (Please do not quote without authors’ permission) GIN Conference 2012, Linköping Oct. 22-24 1 Governance of innovative cleantech retrofitting in the shipping industry? Experiences from a Danish case study Roberto Rivas-Hermann* §α , Carla Smink* β and Søren Kerndrup* γ (*) Aalborg University, Department Development and Planning, Vestre Havnepromenade 9, 3.floor, DK-9000, Aalborg, Denmark (§) Maritime Center for Operations and Development (MARCOD) (α) Corresponding author, rrh@plan.aau.dk , tel. +45 9940 3654 (β)carla@plan.aau.dk (γ)soeren@plan.aau.dk Abstract Air pollution from maritime transportation has become an important public health and environmental concern. As result, new international regulations seek to reduce the pollutants issuing from marine fuels combustion. Marine cleaner technology has been regarded as the key solution to comply with regulations and reduce operation costs. However, definitions of maritime cleantech differ and range from end-of-pipe pollution control equipment, more efficient engines, improved hull-design and alternate propulsion fuels (LNG, methanol). Different constellations of actors seem to follow different cleantech trajectories. It is therefore important to develop new forms of governance in order to create innovations, which are comparable with the state of art in other industries and new ways of building networks and partnerships. The paper aims to improve the understanding of cleaner technology as innovative retrofitting and forms of governance in the shipping sector by analyzing: How can governance promote clean tech innovation in the shipping industry? The Danish "Partnership for cleaner shipping" has been analyzed to answer this question. This partnership was initiated by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency in collaboration with the Danish Ship owners' Association. The partnership identifies innovative cleaner retrofitting as one of the key domains with the purpose to improve Danish shipping firms to create competitive advantage and comply with the new international regulations of air pollution avoidance at sea. The case shows that partnerships and networks create a protected space for development of maritime cleaner technology, which improves the environmental performance of the shipping industry by implementing cleaner retrofitting technologies. Keywords Clean tech, Governance, Innovation and Shipping industry 1 Introduction This article defines the shipping industry as seaborne freight transportation. This industry has been a large player in globalization processes during several decades. In particular, containerization facilitates trade in a reliable and efficient way (Fremont and Soppe, 2005). Besides containers, shipping encompasses the transport of liquid and dry bulk, but also passengers. From an environmental planning perspective, seaborne transportation has environmental advantages over road and air transport. In particular, less greenhouse gas emissions per volume of transported goods (IMO 2009b). However, research also shows that some air pollutants are dispersed in coastal areas due to increased marine traffic. Main air pollutants are Sulphur Oxides (SOx) and Nitrogenous Oxides (NOx) (Agrawal et al., 2009; Matthias et al., 2010). International conventions (e.g. International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships) are a traditional way to tackle these environmental impacts. Similarly, private actors increasingly participate in maritime environmental policy making processes (van Leeuwen, 2010). As result, shipping firms tend to adopt voluntary environmental programs–as complementary to environmental regulatory compliance (Wuisan et al., 2012). These combined approaches push forward green shipping practices within the sector. These practices challenge inefficient technology and push firms to retrofit fleets with cleaner technology (Lai et al., 2010). Cleaner technology retrofit is a wide concept that may cover incremental improvements to existing ships. Examples of retrofit are the inclusion of air pollution prevention equipment (e.g. scrubbers, selective catalytic reduction), the use of alternative fuels (e.g. Liquefied Natural Gas, Methanol, etc…) or improvements in the ship hull and propellers (Köhler, 2011).