Environmental NGO-Commissioned Study Finds Ship Design Efficiency Drop

by Ship & Bunker News Team
Monday July 3, 2017

Transport & Environment (T&E) today announced that a new study has found that the average design efficiency of new bulk carriers, oil tankers, and gas carriers was worse in 2016 than in 2015.

TheĀ  study, which was conducted by CE Delft and commissioned by T&E and Seas At Risk, also found that the portion of new ships complying with future efficiency standards also decreased in 2016, while design efficiency of container ships and general cargo ships was found to have stagnated following a period of improvement.

Further, the study confirmed earlier findings that "a considerable proportion" of new ships are over-complying with the International Maritime Organization's (IMO) Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI), with 14 percent of bulk carriers, 52 percent of container ships, 23 percent of tankers, 21 percent of gas carriers, and 55 percent of general cargo ships that entered the fleet in 2016 having already met the 2025 standard.

"Despite a clear trend of increasing over-compliance with ship design efficiency standards over recent years, ships built in 2016 mark a clear break from this tendency. Unless EEDI requirements are tightened, there is a risk that this backsliding could continue back to efficiency levels merely required by regulation," said Faig Abbasov, Shipping Officer at T&E.

"The significant gap between achieved efficiency levels and what is required by the regulation only underlines the urgency to ensure the requirements match the levels of efficiency that industry has clearly shown it is capable of achieving."

John Maggs, senior policy advisor at Seas At Risk, commenting on the study's findings, said: "Tighter ship design efficiency standards are an obvious low hanging fruit as the IMO embarks on the development of a comprehensive strategy to tackle climate change.

"The study shows both the potential of design standards to mitigate future ship greenhouse gas emissions and the very real danger that if the IMO doesn't act quickly then hard-won design efficiency gains will be lost."