Liang Wu

As different industries are launching technological initiatives to tackle climate change, this project examines decarbonization in theory and in practice in the case of shipping – the globalized industry responsible for transporting 90% of international trade.

My method is mixed and multipronged. It involves in-person and remote ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation at ports undergoing electrification and digitalization, aboard retrofitted and/or dual-fueled vessels, and across online decarbonization forums and platforms; media, policy, and legal analyses; and structured, semi-structured interviews with interlocutors in the government, research and development, industrial, and other relevant sectors.

By scrutinizing these subjects’ narratives and practices, opinions and experiences associated with emergent maritime innovations, I will analyze how their decarbonization visions and missions are shaping technological design, channeling capital, configuring labor, and generating socio-environmental (in)equality.

This project sheds light on the often-invisible individuals and institutions within the transnational maritime network of global supply chains, thus moving beyond the prevalent technology-centric mentality, landbound focus, and nation-state framework found in academia and society at large. It contributes to critical studies of evolving global capitalism and human condition facing environmental challenges to inform and bring about a better future.