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The implementation of MARPOL Annex VI in the North and Baltic Sea Sulphur Emission Control Area (SECA) has raised economic concerns among shippers and shipowners, as well as spurred policymakers to appeal to various interests, such as citizen health, export industry competitiveness, and consumer prices. To justify their cases, policymakers and stakeholders have commissioned various agencies to monitor the implementation’s effects upon sustainability, especially regarding a potential modal shift from sea to road transport. This article thus reviews some of these commissioned studies in order to analyse the effects of the implementation and the possibility of modal shift. It also provides an agent-based simulation study of route choice for comparatively high-value cargo from Lithuania in the east to the United Kingdom in the west. Ultimately, the results of our TAPAS study do not provide concrete evidence supporting a modal shift from sea to road transport and indeed, they indicate that a shift is unlikely to occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We identify the determinants of the owners' abatement choice for newbuilding ships. • Vessel type plays a critical role in the shipowners' abatement solutions. • The shipowners from different countries exhibit a unique abatement preference. • The Sulfur Cap has triggered demand for scrubber but not alternative fuel. • The influence of bunker cost for abatement solutions of new vessels is pretty weak. Because of the long lifetime of newbuilding vessels, shipowners' emission abatement solutions will have a profound impact on the greening transition of the shipping industry. A multinominal logit model is developed to identify the key determinants that affect the shipowners' choice of the solutions. New findings include: (1) Alternative fuels (e.g. liquefied natural gas) are the most attractive choice for gas ships and pure car carriers; and dry bulk ships and crude tankers prefer to use low-sulfur fuels. (2) Singaporean and Japanese shipowners are more likely to adopt the alternative fuels. (3) The IMO 2020 cap has significantly affected shipowners' preference for scrubbers but not for alternative fuels. It is well known that economic factors affecting a shipowner's decisions include freight rate and bunker cost but these factors weakly influence the emission abatement solution choice for new ships. This research provides helpful insights for the policymaker to guide shipowners to invest in more eco-friendly vessels and assist various stakeholders in forming efficient decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]