Shipping industry mulls miles-per-gallon-style efficiency metrics

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) is putting the finishing touches to proposals that could see all shipping operators sign up to mandatory fuel efficiency metrics that would require them to disclose how efficient their fleets are.

The proposals, which will be put before the IMO's Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) in July, were discussed at a meeting of the organisation's greenhouse gas (GHG) working group in London last week and are widely expected to be adopted by the industry.

Central to the proposals is an energy efficiency design index (EEDI) for new ships that will provide operators with a formula similar to the miles-per-gallon metric used by auto manufacturers that allows them to calculate how much energy a ship uses to transport cargo.

The IMO said that the metric had been trialled and was now being refined ahead of the MEPC meeting, but added that the expected outcome would make use of the metric mandatory for all new ships.

It said that providing ship designers with a standard measure of fuel efficiency would "stimulate innovation and technical development of all the elements influencing the energy efficiency of a ship, thus making it possible to design and build intrinsically energy efficient ships of the future".

Alongside the EEDI metric, members of the GHG working group also debated improvements to the Energy Efficiency Operational Index, which rates how efficiently a ship is being operated, and new guidelines designed to provide operators with advice on how to curb energy use through improved voyage planning, speed and power optimisation and better fleet management and cargo handling.

The IMO said that the proposals would again be put before the MEPC meeting where they are expected to be adopted in either voluntary or mandatory form.

The meeting in July could have huge implications for the global shipping industry because it is expected to finalise the recommendations that the sector will put forward to the UN at the Copenhagen climate change negotiations in December.

International shipping and aviation are not currently covered by the Kyoto Protocol and the UN has instructed both sectors to recommend how they should be incorporated in any future international deal.

The IMO is expected to recommend widespread adoption of energy efficiency metrics and best practices and is also debating whether or not to propose a global carbon cap-and-trade scheme for the sector that would cap shipping emissions and place a price on carbon emissions for fleet operators.