Practical Guide to the Selection of Energy Efficiency Technologies for Ships

October 10, 2022

A Practical Guide to the Selection of Energy Efficiency Technologies for Ships has been published by the Global Industry Alliance to Support Low Carbon Shipping (Low Carbon GIA) under the IMO-Norway GreenVoyage2050 Project. Together with its accompanying Excel tool, the Guide aims to support shipowners looking into retrofits, with helpful guidance on considerations and operational practices that should be taken into account when selecting relevant technologies.

“Transparency of performance is a key barrier to the uptake of Energy Efficiency Technologies for ships – or EETs. We hope that the publication of this Guide and its accompanying tool, will support shipowners and operators, particularly those with limited in-house technical departments, to assess the energy saving potential of EETs and enable a more informed comparison between different technologies.” said Mr. David Connolly, Chief Technologist at Silverstream Technologies and Chair of the Low Carbon GIA Energy Efficiency Technologies and Operational Best Practices workstream.

The Guide provides a simple yet flexible methodology for shortlisting technologies, based on a set of eight evaluation criteria – similarity, plausibility, accuracy, overall and specific volume of orders, repeat orders, consistency and compatibility.

The methodology and the associated Excel-based high-level assessment tool are designed to be user-friendly, and do not require specialist technical knowledge, using a “traffic light” scoring system to help in narrowing down and ranking the available choices according to the level of confidence that shipowners may have in the ability of a given technology to deliver on the vendor’s performance claims.

The guide is primarily aimed at shipowners and ship operator. Equipment suppliers and technology providers may also find the methodology and high-level assessment tool useful, in order to increase confidence in their performance claims.

This guide is designed to provide users seeking to improve the energy efficiency of their ships with helpful guidance on considerations and operational practices that should be taken into account when selecting relevant technologies. It offers a simple yet flexible methodology for shortlisting the technologies and manufacturers that are most likely to be able to deliver on their savings and performance claims.

Reference is made the Ship Energy Efficiency Management Plan (SEEMP), as discussed in the first two sections of chapter 2.

In particular, the SEEMP should be updated and revised to reflect the ship’s current operational profile. Some of this work would need to be done in conjunction with the development of an implementation plan for achieving carbon intensity indicator-related targets, which should be incorporated into SEEMPsby1January2023inline with new standards for the shipping industry. A range of operational measures are then introduced that have the potential to generate substantial savings – in most cases, savings that are greater than those which may be obtained by retrofitting energy efficiency technologies (section 2.3).

Such measures should be implemented to the extent possible first, before considering retrofits. Once again, some of these may be addressed as part of the implementation plan.

Chapter 3 is dedicated to the contextualization of savings claims and provides relevant terminology.

The main point is that claimed savings are much diminished when EEXI and carbon intensity requirements are applied. This is due to the calculation methodology and needs to be taken into account, especially if the main objective is to achieve compliance with the regulations. Finally, a high-level assessment methodology is introduced in chapter 4, which sets out each of the eight evaluation categories– similarity, plausibility, accuracy, overall and specific volume of orders, repeat orders, consistency and compatibility– and explains how energy efficiency technologies should be assessed using a “traffic light” scoring system (section 4.2).

The methodology is designed to be user-friendly, does not require specialist technical knowledge (though having such knowledge would be an advantage).

This is followed by a step-by-step example of the assessment methodology.