Energy efficiency ratings cutting costs, and emissions - Peter Boyd, Director of Operations, Carbon War Room. Article arranged by Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide

Posted Tuesday, 21 September 2010 - Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide

It is thirteen years since the IMO began investigating shipping's contribution to climate change. This month, nation states will send their delegates to the IMO's Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC), where an expert group is due to report on market based instruments to reduce emissions. Progress on this is welcome, but with no guidance from the UNFCCC process on shipping's role in global emissions talks, the IMO is very unlikely to reach any kind of decision about the levels of reductions to be imposed for the sector. Concrete results on the Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) are thus important, since this will start to cure the market inefficiencies limiting the development of a lower-emissions fleet.
The EEDI is a complicated mathematical formula that provides a benchmark for an individual ship's design in terms of fuel efficiency in relation to its transport capacity. Member states agreed interim guidelines on the formula in October 2008, and since then, there has been considerable discussion on how best to apply it usefully to all vessel classes. In short-sea, for example, there are challenges with producing an accurate rating.
The shipping industry is often characterized as lukewarm towards environmental regulation. In Carbon War Room's dealings however, we have found this to be the reverse. Like many other sectors, it is also keen to have regulatory certainty to enable good investment decisions.
The EEDI is an excellent start to evaluating vessel efficiency, and though the IMO is hitherto only planning to apply it to new-builds to encourage the integration of energy efficiency measures into ship design we saw that it could be applied to the existing fleet, so that all international vessels could be viewed transparently in terms of their efficiency. Moreover, as data and the methodology improve, the ratings will be able to incorporate CO2 grams per nautical mile for vessel operation in order to stimulate investment in retrofit technologies that improve ratings.

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