The global trade share of international shipping is approximately 80% and it is therefore critical to the global economy. Carbon emissions from international shipping are expected to increase significantly in line with global trade trends. Several niche technologies for ship propulsion provide solutions to reduce shipping CO2 emissions. These technologies face innovation barriers that potentially limit their diffusion. An agent-based model is developed to explore the effect of imperfect agent information and split incentives barriers that current shipping models omit. A transitions perspective is adopted to analyze the diffusion of Flettner rotor technology in time charter drybulk shipping with the model. Simulation results are more conservative compared to those models and show how barriers impact the diffusion of rotor technology, even on favourable shipping routes. The simultaneous introduction of carbon pricing and demonstration projects greatly increases CO2 emission reductions to 2050 relative to either policy introduced in isolation.feasible add-on technology to conventional oil fueled propulsion technologies (Nelissen et al., 2016).Based on this MLP conceptualization, an agent-based model (ABM) is developed to explore the effect of barriers on Flettner rotor technology diffusion in the time charter drybulk shipping sector on a route with favourable wind conditions. The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides the background to the MLP, niche-based innovations and an overview of the international shipping context and modelling work performed to date. Section 3 develops the ABM and presents simulation scenarios and sensitivity analysis results. Section 4 discusses results, limitations of the study and future work and section 5 concludes the paper. BackgroundSection 2.1 outlines briefly the MLP and discusses the extensive literature on transitions and niche. This is used in section 2.2 to conceptualize the shipping transition and the barriers that alternative propulsion technologies face. Section 2.3 provides an overview of modelling applications in the shipping sector to contextualize the model developed in this paper.