After a hundred years of maritime development that has generally seen ships become larger and faster, since the Selandia launched the marine diesel into the oceanic trades a century ago, there are new challenges governing ship design. Giving the keynote address at IMarEST’s Ship Propulsion Systems Conference in London recently, BIMCO’s Aron Frank Sorensen emphasised the extraordinary number of uncertainties that faced the shipping community today.
It was the regulatory and environmental challenges that face the industry today that makes any investment decision taken these days exceptionally difficult. How can you make an investment in a ship that will be in operation for more than twenty years? Should you be investing in so-called “eco-ships”, which may cost some 25% more, but offer a somewhat doubtful business case? Should you be focussing on LNG, which has so far achieved small penetration, and awaits the arrival of an effective infrastructure? Should you decide on scrubbers, or opt for distillate? Will the ECA’s spread around the world, and when? And if you choose one of the various options, will all the criteria that governed your choice change before your ship is amortised? What direction will regulation, fuel price and economics take during the anticipated lifetime of your ship?
This was an interesting conference in that it offered few hard and fast solutions but helped to focus minds on the range of imponderables which face owners and operators today. The present regulatory position was set out by the International Maritime Organization’s Arsenio Dominguez, who expressed the frequently aired hope that the tightening environmental regulations “will hopefully stimulate innovation”. But it was, he suggested, a moving target, with the industry required to adhere to globally binding CO2 reductions, through the technical and operational methods which were already making an impact and possibly the “highly political” strategy of market-based mechanisms. Compliance, he pointed out, is not an option, with the industry and the regulator alike pressured by social and political demands, not forgetting costs.
The conference was also characterised by some thoughtful technical papers, showing that there is no shortage of innovation driven by the threat of unsustainable fuel costs, as owners seek to offer viable marine transport in the spreading Emission Control Areas (ECAs). Engine builders and designers suggest that much can still be done to provide efficiency gains, even though the demand is no longer for speed and power, but environmental sustainability. But will the compromise that is always present in every ship design err too strongly on the side of lower power, encouraged by the way that this appears to provide a lower Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI)?
In a largely engineering forum, it was interesting to hear from a very experienced ship master about how he saw the situation. Captain Nicholas Cooper, who had commanded both container ships and large bulk carriers, expressed his concern that whatever was done in the name of efficiency and environmental sustainability, it should not result in underpowered ships, which he said, would be exceedingly difficult to control in bad weather or when manoeuvring in the close confines of a difficult anchorage. It was a useful intervention, after listening to engine builders talking about the way that their products could be throttled back to provide “super-slow” steaming in the event that freight rates remain low, and fuel prices high.
It was also worth recalling Mr. Sorensen’s keynote address, when he suggested that the main focus really ought to be on “better, safer and greener” ships. How these criteria can be defined will remain a source of argument, we suspect!