Managing Risk: Shipowners Not Meeting Emission Regs Face a Big Business Risk
There is increasing pressure for shipowners to sharpen their environmental performance, driven by an IMO target to halve greenhouse gas emissions from shipping by 2050, regional regulations and market pull from charterers, banks and investors.
“This represents a whole new ball game for the industry. Optimization of ship operations has traditionally been dictated by the efficiency of delivery around the globe that has typically meant being able to sail at full speed, thereby burning more fuel, to minimize costs for the charterer. It has been driven by money, not emissions,” says DNV GL’s Performance Advisory head Bjorn Berger.
The adoption of new digital technologies is seen by DNV GL as vital to achieve decarbonization goals for the shipping industry as the global green agenda shifts the business playing field for shipowners.
“But the new green regime dictates that shipowners must minimize emissions from their operations and efficiency will be defined by their ability to reduce their environmental footprint, which will be a key differentiating factor in future competition for charter contracts.”
Furthermore, he says failure to comply with new environmental rules will pose “a huge business risk” as vessels that do not meet emissions requirements will be unable to trade, though “not all shipowners have fully realized this”.
As such, digitalization of ship operations, in tandem with the use of alternative fuels, will be a key enabler to optimize the energy efficiency of fleets to meet low-carbon standards.
However, much of the maritime sector is lagging behind other industries such as aviation and automotive – in which digitalization has been widely applied for decades – as well as offshore where concepts such as data sensors on equipment, digital twins, artificial intelligence and remote operations are now rapidly gaining ground, according to Berger.
He believes there is massive untapped potential for the shipping industry to improve its efficiency through harnessing data flows from operations that can have a positive impact on commercial, environmental and safety performance.
Digitalization facilitates the automation of processes and functions, and combining data streams from multiple sources allows the maritime industry to make better-informed decisions more quickly, creating more efficient and responsive organizations, according to DNV GL.
Ships are increasingly being fitted with advanced sensors to monitor fuel consumption and energy efficiency, providing real-time data that can be integrated into an overall fleet management system for continuous learning and optimization of operations.
According to Berger, there are several examples of shipowners installing a fuel monitoring device on the bridge and testing out different operational measures to check how this affected fuel consumption. In many cases, minor differences in operational behavior reduced fuel consumption by 10%.
“When such data monitoring is aligned with centralization of fleet operations from an onshore control room, this gives the shipowner insight and transparency for better decision-making to assimilate best practices and thereby operate the fleet in the most cost and fuel-efficient way,” says DNV GL’s Performance Advisory head Bjorn Berger
Norway-based navigation software provider NAVTOR is already onboard this trend with its so-called e-navigation system offering seamless transfer of data from ship to shore that covers route planning so any deviation from the passage plan can be rectified in co-ordination with the crew.
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