Ocean-going ships to get ratings on energy efficiency

Richard Branson sets up free internet database detailing vessels' engine size and CO2 emissions
John Vidal guardian.co.uk 5 Dec 10;

A free internet database set up by Richard Branson will today list the energy efficiency of almost every ocean-going vessel, in a scheme designed to reduce shipping emissions by nearly 25%.

Using publicly available data on the engine size and CO2 emissions of nearly 60,000 ships, exporters and importers, as well as holidaymakers on cruises, will be able to choose between clean and dirty ships.

The initiative, called Shippingefficiency.org, rates ships from A-G in a similar fashion to ratings given to fridges or washing machines. It will allow supermarkets, oil and mining companies, food importers, retailers and manufacturers to specify that their goods are sent from places like China or Australia only by the least polluting ships.

Britain, which imports most of its food and manufactured goods by sea, is expected to be one of the heaviest users of the database.

Shipping contributes around 1 billion tonnes of CO2 a year, about 3-4% of the world's total. This makes it collectively the sixth largest greenhouse gas polluter in the world, just after Germany.

"By eco-labelling clean and dirty ships, we hope to change the mindset in shipping and begin making gigaton-scale reductions in emissions," said Peter Boyd, director of Carbon War Room, a business NGO co-founded by Richard Branson with the aim of saving millions of tonnes of CO2 from industry.

"The shipping industry was doing pretty well nothing. In the past, any ship was much like another, and ships polluted like mad. We hope this will act as a catalyst for the industry to become not only sustainable, but also more profitable," said Branson, who is in Cancún for the climate talks.

Shipping has been slow to address carbon emissions. The world fleet has been driven for years by engines designed to burn the cheapest, dirtiest "bunker" fuel. Nearly 15% of the world's ships account for about half of all the industry emissions.

In addition, most shipping lines traditionally pass on most of the fuel costs to charterers, providing little incentives to build more efficient ships.

Under the new ratings, the biggest ships in the world range from the most to the least efficient. The giant tax haven cruise ship, The World, rates an F – the second worst score – the Queen Mary 2 is only slightly better with an E, and the massive Allure of the Seas – launched last week and officially the largest cruise liner in the world – is an F.

The lowest score, G, goes to the mighty Aegean, a giant crude oil tanker built nearly 40 years ago, but top marks go to the Berge Stahl, a bulk carrier which is so big it can only dock in two ports in the world.

Shipping and aviation are not obliged by international law to reduce their emissions as countries are. This is expected to change but depends on climate change talks taking place at Cancún.

The database, which relies on information supplied by the UN and international ship registers, includes the majority of the world's container ships, tankers, bulk carriers, cargo ships, cruise liners and ferries. Ships are compared by class not sizes. However, the data base does not cover warships, some of the least efficient fuel users in the world.

The database is expected to be used by ports to offer incentives to clean ships, as well as to shipowners and designers.

"Holiday-makers choosing a leisure cruise can go on the site to check out just how green their chosen liner is," said Boyd.

The initiative was welcomed by at least one large shipping company. "Now everyone can see clearly how our vessels perform, both our customers and the general public. We welcome the new initiative on shipping transparency, and would encourage other shipping lines to share their data as well,", said Jacob Sterling, head of climate and environment for the Maersk Line.

Shipping to steer cleaner carbon course
Richard Black BBC News 6 Dec 10;

Ships could be charged different fees to dock depending on how much carbon they emit, according to ideas being discussed at the UN climate summit.

The government of Papua New Guinea is considering the plan, and is hoping other nations may become involved.

The Carbon War Room, co-founded by Sir Richard Branson, has launched an online tool grading 60,000 commercial vessels according to their emissions.

Shipping contributes about 1Gt of CO2 each year, more than the entire UK.

Currently shipping fuels are exempt from national carbon accounts, which has caused much head-scratching about how their emissions could be curbed.
Ranked, filed

The new approach is to give businesses the tool they need to selectively use lower-emitting vessels.

"The Carbon War Room has been advocating the need for business to play a leading role in the fight to reduce carbon emissions," said Sir Richard.

"This data hub for shipping will help the key players in the industry and their customers make better decisions for their businesses and ultimately, the planet."

Data for 60,000 ships, including many of the big, long-distance carriers, has been put in to the website using data from international registers and methods developed by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).

The project's initiators hope that big corporations in particular will selectively use low-carbon carriers, encouraging all operators to improve their operations and reducing the industry's overall carbon footprint.

"We're hoping that companies like Nike or Walmart will go for it for two reasons," said Peter Boyd of the Carbon War Room.

"Firstly, they're concerned about greening their brands, but also about securing their supply chains."

But, he said, he was also intrigued by the idea that governments could set differential landing charges for ships depending on their emissions.

Papua New Guinea's delegate to the UN climate convention meeting, Kevin Conrad, told BBC News his government was considering the idea as part of a bigger package of measures designed to cut carbon through engagement with the private sector.

"Our duty is to find those that are leading the charge in the private sector, and work with them to achieve our climate goals," he said.

The ships would be rated on an A-G scale according to their efficiency.

The scheme's labels look very similar to the ratings given to consumer electrical goods such as refrigerators in the EU, which have helped drive up standards.

The Carbon War Room - a non-profit organisation aiming to "harness the power of entrepreneurs" to curb climate change - is hoping that ship owners will voluntarily choose to lodge their emissions data on the website shippingeffiency.org in order to boost their profile.

They calculate that global shipping emissions could be cut by about 30% just through increasing efficiency, although much greater gains could materialise in future as designers pursue new - or revisit old - concepts such as sails, kites and solar power.

Ships could be charged different fees to dock depending on how much carbon they emit, according to ideas being discussed on the sidelines of the UN climate summit.

Greening of merchant ships
Developments are afoot to replace pollutive fuels with efficient, cleaner alternatives
David Hughes Business Times 8 Dec 10;

WITH the recovery from global recession still weak and uncertain, now may seem a strange time to think about replacing much of the world's fleet. In fact there are pressures on the industry that may mean that happening much sooner than most people, and certainly including me, would have thought possible until very recently.

Right now many of the world's politicians are at Cancun, Mexico, trying to thrash out a deal at the UN's Climate Change Conference. Whether that will be successful seems doubtful but what is certain is that pressure on shipping to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will grow.

Incidentally, Singapore company Ecospec is also there with its revolutionary CSNOx scrubber that can remove a high proportion of CO2, as well as oxides of nitrogen and sulphur (NOx and SOx), from ship emissions. It has set up a demonstration plant in a car park.

If the Ecospec scrubber performs as hoped operationally and is widely adopted it will make a very big contribution to drastically reducing shipping's 'carbon footprint'. It won't, though, remove another driver towards radical redesigning of merchant ships - rising oil prices.

On that topic a new study, by the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), predicts global oil will run out between 2041 and 2054 or, it warns, about 90 years before replacement technologies are ready, at the current pace of research and development.

The forecast by UC Davis researchers is based on market expectations and will probably be the subject of much debate. Nevertheless there can be few who believe the long-term trend of oil prices can be anything but upwards. So there will be strong pressure on designers to improve fuel efficiency.

Over the past year or so we have heard a lot about liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a marine fuel, with the classification societies doing a lot of work in this area. The consensus has been that LNG is likely to catch on in shortsea trades and possibly in the offshore support industry in some geographical areas; in both cases this is because it is feasible to provide fuelling facilities in limited areas.

In this vein, last week, a pioneer in using LNG offshore, Norwegian-based Eidesvik Offshore, ordered its fifth LNG fuelled supply vessel from Kleven Maritime. The company's delivery of the world's first gas-powered cargo ship, the Viking Energy, in 2003 and since then has built the gas ships Viking Queen and Viking Lady. For good measure, and in another 'green' move, the Viking Lady is fitted with a fuel cell.

This week, however, Norwegian classification society Det Norske Veritas has challenged the idea that LNG will be confined to a limited number of shortsea trades. It unveiled a new LNG-fuelled crude oil tanker concept that 'has a hull shape that removes the need for ballast water and will almost eliminate local air pollution'.

DNV says that its Triality concept very large crude oil carrier (VLCC) has the same operational range as a conventional VLCC and can operate in the ordinary spot market. It is claimed that, compared to the traditional VLCC, the Triality VLCC will: emit 34 per cent less CO2, eliminate entirely the need for ballast water (and thus reduce energy use on empty trips), eliminate entirely the venting of cargo vapours and use 25 per cent less energy.

DNV also says less harm will be caused to the health of people living close to busy shipping routes and ports as NOx emissions will be reduced by more than 80 per cent while emissions of SOx and particulate matter will fall by as much as 95 per cent.

DNV's CEO Henrik Madsen said: 'I am convinced that gas will become the dominant fuel for merchant ships. By 2020, the majority of owners will order ships that can operate on LNG.' He added: 'I am convinced that the Triality concept will create great interest among ship builders and crude oil tanker operators, so that the first Triality crude oil tanker will leave a shipyard before the end of 2014.'

If Mr Madsen is correct there are of course massive implications for the bunker industry. It will, for a time at least make supplying marine fuel a very diverse - and complicated - industry.

Personally I think if Ecospec's scrubber fulfils its promise continuing to use residual oil as the principal marine fuel will be the most practical solution for quite some time to come.

In the longer term, there must be a replacement for oil, and it just so happens there have been reports recently of developments in two areas.

The first brings us back to Singapore. The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore says that funding of up to $6 million will be available over 3 years for a new Maritime Fuel Cell Research Initiative launched jointly with Temasek Polytechnic last week.

The MOU specifically mentions two projects. The first is to test-bed fuel cell as auxiliary power in vessels while the second is to develop an automated process of supplying continuous clean power to underwater systems and devices, such as Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, submerged acoustic devices and underwater data logging instruments for processes like underwater surveys, measurement of currents and sedimentation.

And there is the nuclear option. A new research consortium comprising Lloyd's Register, Enterprises Shipping and Trading, Hyperion Power Generation and BMT Nigel Gee, is to examine the marine applications for small modular reactors.

The consortium says it plans to investigate the practical maritime applications for small modular reactors as commercial tanker-owners search for new designs that could deliver safer, cleaner and commercially viable forms of propulsion for the global fleet. It believes nuclear power is technically feasible and has the potential to drastically reduce the CO2 emissions caused by commercial shipping.

Lloyd's Register CEO Richard Sadler predicted that, 'as society recognises the limited choices available in the low-carbon, oil-scarce economy and as land-based nuclear plants become common place, we will see nuclear ships on specific trade routes sooner than many people currently anticipate.'

Perhaps a later version of DNV's Triality will have a small reactor pushing it through the waves. And of course nuclear ships are steam turbine ships so expertise that has very nearly been discarded could suddenly be needed again.

However this all turns out, a fascinating future lies ahead.