Posted - Wednesday, 20 February 2013 | 00:00 - Nikos Roussanoglou, Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide
In a multi-tier market that differentiates between vessels based on
their efficiency, the newly bred "Eco-Ships" will result in
significantly improved employment opportunities and earnings for these
energy optimised vessels, says Mr. Athanasios Reisopoulos, Vice
President, Area Office Southern Europe of Germanischer Lloyd Hellas
M.E.P.E. In an interview with Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide, Mr.
Reisopoulos
discussed the latest measures in effect regarding reducing emissions
and better streamlining a ship owner's operations, the prospects of LNG
as a leading shipping fuel, as well as GL's market-leading products and
services, aimed at aiding ship owners achieve better fuel-efficiency.
Among the key issues that the shipping industry is facing today
has to do with the reduction of shipping emissions, which not only
benefits the environment, but also ship owners, since they can reduce
their operating costs, through the respective fall in fuel consumption.
What types of package services does GL offer ship owners towards this
direction?
Reducing the emissions from the shipping industry is the focus of a
great deal of imminent regulation and software systems that help to give
owners and charterers a transparent and comprehensive assessment of the
environmental performance of their vessels are in ever greater use. Not
only in terms of emissions to air, where Sulphur limits will soon come
into place, but in terms of ballast water, other liquid waste and solid
rubbish.
There are a number of operational systems that aid efficiency and
reducing environmental impacts already in use today including: trim
optimisation, engine system performance optimisation, weather routing,
voyage execution and performance monitoring. GL’s SeaScout system is an
integrated onboard system that provides ships’ officers with
decision-making support.
GL also recently launched the new GL EmissionManager system to track and
record the total picture of a vessel’s or an entire fleet’s emissions.
The system can record and analyse all emissions, including the
environmental, operational and state data. This can then be used to
build up a picture of the vessel, and used for comparison purposes
within a fleet, as well as to support certification and approval
applications.
Input into the system can be triggered by events and the process ensures
data quality through plausibility and completeness checks. Collected by
an onboard recorder this data is transferred to GL’s “Green Server”
where it can be accessed securely via the web. GL’s FleetManager
analysis software can then generate reports for entire or individual
fleets, which can be accessed by the ship owner or operator.
FutureShip, GL’s consulting subsidiary offers a number of services and
products, including the award winning ECO-Assistant trim optimiser. Trim
is one of the central drivers of energy efficiency in ship operation
and the system delivers an optimum trim angle for a specific ship with
the input of only a few simple operational parameters, such as current
speed, displacement and water depth. It can be applied to all kinds of
vessels, including container vessels and bulk carriers and installed on
any computer, requiring no modifications to the ship and no interfaces
with the vessel’s systems.
During 2013 a number of new regulations are expected to come into force,
which are going to impact the day-to-day operation of shipping
companies. Could you highlight the most important ones and how do you
think they are going to impact the maritime business?
An increased focus on the environmental performance of the maritime
industry as a whole has led to the introduction of the first global
industry wide measures to combat CO2 emissions – the EEDI and the SEEMP.
These measures, took effect at the beginning of 2013, will have a
sweeping effect on most of the world’s commercial sea going vessels and
owners must be prepared for their introduction.
Envisioned as a management tool to assist a company in improving energy
efficiency of ships in operation, a SEEMP must be specific for each ship
in a fleet and should be used together with established environmental
management systems. A SEEMP allows companies to reduce fuel consumption
through simple operational measures and making investments that can
improve performance and pay off in reduced costs.
The SEEMP has the potential to enhance the deployment of data sharing
and the modern software tools that go along with the sophisticated
analysis of a vessel’s and a fleet’s performance. It also seems certain
to increase the commercial pressure on inefficient operators as
companies which take advantage of fuel saving measures are driven to
maximise their efficiencies. Vessels with a SEEMP in place has already
shown to make marked improvements in fuel consumption and as the
processes and systems become more familiar to the shipping industry this
seems certain to grow.
On the other hand the EEDI will continue to develop and improve and its
full application will really only be seen in the future as ever more
efficient vessels. Increasingly, however, we are seeing that clients are
coming to GL for early certification of their vessels, and in some
cases their entire fleets, as they see the EEDI as a way to demonstrate
the investments they have made in efficiency gains in their vessels.
The Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 (MLC 2006) will also have a
significant impact on shipowners, managers, crewing agencies and most
importantly the seafarers on-board. With its entry into force this year,
the MLC 2006 will consolidate some 37 ILO conventions and require the
certification of over 55,000 seagoing vessels. Preparing for this sea
change will require a massive adjustment and impact on every level of an
organisation. Around 50,000 ships will have to be inspected and
certified before the MLC 2006 enters into force.
The MLC 2006 Convention requires the documentation of many crewing
processes including: checking that all required positions on board
filled, that the seafarers are medically fit, well trained and qualified
for the duties they are assigned to, and that records are maintained of
the seafarers’ daily hours of work and rest.
LNG is among the most promising new fuels soon to be widely
available to ship owners who wish to use this as their vessels' leading
energy source. GL has long been campaigning for the benefits from the
use of LNG as a shipping fuel. Which are the benefits of this fuel, both
in terms of costs entailed, as well as environmentally?
LNG fuelled ships will have overall lower Co2 emissions. However the
real benefit from LNG comes in terms of local emissions – SOx, NOx and
particulates and this is where it has the greatest advantages over HFO.
An LNG fuelled vessel will also have a better EEDI. In the absence of
methane slip, LNG has a lower carbon content than standard HFO and
therefore assuming all other design characteristics are equal a LNG
fuelled ship will have a better EEDI.
As ever the prime consideration in LNG adoption will be fuel price, as
we can see from the MAN/GL containership study. The actual fuel cost we
will see delivered depends upon how the bunkering and infrastructure
develops, as well as the overall gas market as gas becomes increasingly
important for power generation around the world.
Do you believe that the infrastructure necessary to implement
LNG bunkering is available at the moment? When do you expect this market
to fully develop?
I think we can clearly see from the growing emphasis in the industry and
the steady flow of news reports that LNG as a ship fuel is really
starting to gather momentum. So I expect that over the next few years we
will see an increasingly rapid uptake of this technology, spreading at
first from areas where ECAs will soon enter into force and then as
bunkering infrastructure grows and spreads from regional through to the
major trade routes.
The publication of the EU Clean Fuel Strategy also shows how this
development might progress, with the plan proposing that LNG refuelling
stations be installed in all 139 maritime and inland ports on the Trans
European Core Network by 2020 and 2025 respectively. So in the next 5 to
10 year I think we can expect to have a market that is fairly well
developed.
2012 saw the emergence of the so-called "Eco Ships" in the
market, which are usually commanding a premium price, versus more
conventional new building vessels. Many ship owners still appear to be
sceptical towards those vessels, claiming that their advertised benefits
in terms of fuel consumption are still unproven. What's your view on
this? Are Eco Ships going to dominate the market in the coming years and
why?
In a word – YES. A split between newly optimized Eco ships and less
efficient tonnage has the potential of splitting the world fleet into
the haves and have-nots. Fuel efficiency is now the biggest lever to
increase cost competitiveness with bunkers costs rising to more than one
third of a vessel’s total operating costs. The best operators have
already taking note of this trend, with a study conducted by GL’s
consultancy subsidiary FutureShip revealing that the differences in
design efficiency in major container liner fleets was substantial. Top
players in the market were designing and building vessels to the IMO’s
2025 EEDI reference line today – some 30% more efficient that the
average vessel. The new GL class Carisbrooke Super Green 8500 Vessels,
for example, utilised a number of features which resulted in a 30% lower
EEDI. The four dry cargo vessels have a hydro-dynamically optimized
hull form, special bow form, and an extremely large and efficient ducted
propeller, all of which result in an extremely efficient vessel..
In a multi-tier market that differentiates between vessels based on
their efficiency, this will result in significantly improved employment
opportunities and earnings for energy optimised vessels. These benefits
stem from three sources: the design of new vessels for lower speed, the
utilization of state-of- the-art optimisation technology and services,
and significantly lower newbuilding prices. With the entry of optimised
vessels into the market, cost pressures on existing vessels will
continue to mount, making the importance of making efficiency gains,
especially in operational strategies, increasingly important.
We are already seeing owner/operators – Maersk in a notable example in
2012 – refitting relatively new existing ships to make them more
efficient for slower speed operation. This is a trend that is not going
away and the best operators are already well ahead on this front.
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