In an exclusive interview with Pia Meling, Managing Director at EVIGO, we explore the concept of ‘rational sustainability’—an approach rooted in reason, logic, and evidence-based decision-making. This framework empowers companies to make choices that benefit both business and society. As such, ship managers must provide the solid decision support that shipowners require to navigate emission reduction strategies effectively.
According to Pia, sustainability must be driven by the board and top management. However, she emphasizes that leadership is reflected in daily actions—the choices leaders make and the language they use. With ESG initiatives under increasing pressure, strong leadership is more important than ever. It means staying the course despite market disruptions and continuing to make rationally sustainable decisions, Pia concludes.
SAFETY4SEA: What is EVIGO’s philosophy for the maritime industry? What specific gaps in the maritime industry is EVIGO addressing?
Pia Meling: Evigo is a dedicated unit for OSM Thome’s “green” services. Our philosophy is to deliver impactful solutions for a more sustainable maritime sector by leveraging the global and deep technical competence of OSM Thome with strong partnerships, innovation and data-driven insights. We are passionate about delivering measurable results for our customers, helping them stay competitive and compliant in a dynamic market and a challenging regulatory environment. There are clear knowledge gaps in our industry for a safe and efficient transition to low carbon fuels, especially when it comes to crew training. It is also demanding for each individual small and medium-sized shipowner to always keep track of the available energy efficiency technologies that can be retrofitted on the existing fleet and to make informed choices on all the potential solutions for optimizing vessel performance. Lastly, the mosaic of international, regional and local environmental regulations is a challenge to keep up with and there are benefits of scale in ensuring effective compliance.
S4S: You’ve had a remarkable career in sustainable shipping. What drew you to take on this role at EVIGO and what are your top priorities for the next 5 years?
P.M.: The last 7 years I have worked with meaningful and futureproof, but niche solutions like zero emission, autonomous vessels and safe and sustainable ship recycling. I recently turned 50 and felt an urgency in making an immediate and positive impact on the daily operations of the world fleet. OSM Thome is in my view the most transparent, progressive and “people-first” ship manager and marine service provider in the world, investing both in crew welfare, safety culture and sustainability, helping the maritime industry to decarbonize. Evigo is an important, new part of OSM Thome, and I believe we are set up for success, impact and scalability. My top priority for the next 5 years is to help accelerate the transformation of the shipping industry; becoming both greener, smarter and safer. I would like to make tangible contributions for our customers and for the industry at large.
S4S: What are your thoughts on decarbonization and sustainability in shipping? How should ship managers adapt to these industry shifts?
P.M.: Decarbonization and sustainability are two words we have heard a lot over the last years, and the topic of numerous conferences. There has been a certain inflation in the use of these terms in my view and we now must move from talk to action. I am a fan of the term “Rational Sustainability”, which is an approach to sustainability that is grounded in reason, logic, and evidence-based decision-making. Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School, explains how companies should evaluate sustainability issues rationally, focusing on outcomes over labels, questioning assumptions, and recognising diminishing returns and trade-offs. Rational sustainability allows companies to make decisions that serve both business and society. Ship managers can play an instrumental role in providing the solid decision support that shipowners need in navigating their options for reducing emissions. In OSM Thome we take care of the crewing and the safe operations of more than 900 vessels, and we have a pool of close to 30.000 seafarers as well as more than 2,000 shore employees in 30 locations around the world. We have the scale and the competency to assist with daily vessel performance management, energy efficiency, fuel-saving technologies with attractive ROI, retrofits and alternative fuel strategies. We review vessels and fleets to find the best ways to improve vessel performance, both operationally and by tailormade retrofit solutions. We can provide project management, engineering and turnkey solutions for asset owners, including drydock/repair yard selection, procurement and installations of energy efficiency technologies. Last, but not least we provide tailor-made crew training on environmental regulations, new technologies and alternate fuels.
S4S: What global policy changes—whether from the IMO or national governments—would most effectively accelerate the transition to zero-emission shipping?
P.M.: At the time of writing, IMO delegates are gathered in London for MEPC 83 to try to agree on a global fuel standard and pricing mechanism for shipping’s greenhouse gas emissions. The most effective policy change for shipping to decarbonize would clearly be a global carbon tax in my view, and although EU has been forward leaning in environmental regulation this is creating a competitive disadvantage in Europe if other countries and regions are not following suite. Unfortunately, the extensive EU regulations have also led to a huge administrative burden for shipowners, stealing focus and investment capacity from taking real action on emissions reductions. It’s important to measure and report emissions, but we need to accelerate investments in practical solutions. There are many promising technologies for energy efficiency to be evaluated and implemented on the sailing fleet. Many of these are investments that can have an attractive payback time measured in fuel cost savings and that may increase the value of the vessel in the market, but shipowners need commercial incentives from their charterers and finance providers until a global carbon tax may make these investments profitable.
S4S: What are the biggest opportunities and challenges related to the human element in shipping’s decarbonization journey?
P.M.: A challenge is that most humans generally do not like change, and we like to stay in our comfort zone of knowledge and competency. Shipping’s decarbonization journey is complex and involves not only new technologies but new ways of working, new contracts and incentives. Sharing data and optimizing the whole value chain in shipping also requires collaboration at a new level. The opportunity I see is that through this collaboration we humans can learn from each other and that we will get a sense of accomplishment when we are seeing the result of our efforts in making our industry greener, smarter and safer. A specific challenge is of course the crew members need for continuous learning, but I believe there is untapped potential in new ways of learning; through gamification and more intuitive system support and automation. Today’s reporting of fuel consumption data for e.g. EU ETS and Fuel EU is highly manual and has room for improvement. We must be conscious of the increased workload for our crew related to decarbonization and make sure we have a human-centred design process for both hardware, software and procedures.
S4S: What is your wish list for the industry and/or regulators and all parties involved for addressing the critical issue of decarbonization?
P.M.: For the industry: Stop talking. Start doing. Be prepared to take some risk and learn from your mistakes as you go, there is no silver bullet. Share data. Share your insights, not only the glossy successes but also share the failures and keep learning and evolving. Recruit people from other industries, from non-conventional backgrounds with diverse ways of thinking and create an innovation culture from within your company. For the regulators: Stop micromanaging and be technology and fuel agnostic. Put a global price on pollution, ensure a level playing field and stick to the “polluter pays” principle. Be clear and consistent. Try to be predictable and have a long-term vision.
S4S: How do you see AI and big data shaping the future of sustainable shipping? Are there any specific innovations that particularly excite you?
P.M.: As I in a previous role worked with autonomous vessels supported from a Remote Operations Centre, I am very excited about how machines can learn and solve complex problems much quicker that people, and immediately adopt their big data derived insights across all applications. The immediate potential lies in removing some of the mundane, repetitive and manual error-prone tasks from people so we will have more time for creative problem solving and interactions with other people. To quote a tweet that went viral last year: “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.” The problem that I believe we most solve first is the inferior data quality from our ships, and the manual burden for our crew to report sustainability-linked data. If we don’t have solid data to train our generative AI models on, we will not draw the correct conclusions.
S4S: Strong leadership is essential for advancing ESG initiatives in the maritime industry. How can leaders foster a culture of sustainability across their operations?
P.M.: I believe in the hidden potential in people, and that when we are mobilized towards a meaningful goal and feel like our work is really making a difference, we can achieve incredible results. A culture of sustainability must start at the top, with the board and the top management of the company. Linking executive remuneration (bonus schemes) to sustainability-linked KPI’s may be a good start to drive the desired behaviour. However, I believe that leadership is what you do every day; the choices you make and the words that you use. Employees who feel that they are empowered and who are held accountable will act more responsibly in my experience. ESG initiatives are under heavy pressure these days, as most news headlines are about Trump and Tariffs, and we see rapidly increasing geopolitical tensions. Climate change is however not slowing down, and in my view strong leadership means staying on course despite market disruptions, and keep making the rationally sustainable choices.
S4S: How can industry stakeholders collaborate more effectively to drive meaningful progress toward sustainable development?
P.M.: Over the last years there have been an explosion in sustainability clusters, NGO’s, signed “net zero” pledges, MOU’s and decarbonisation centre memberships. This is a good start, but the tangible result of collaboration is not always evident. I believe that shipping executives must engage more with the regulators; IMO, EU and local governments, to ensure that the regulatory bodies understand the complexities and truly global nature of our industry. And although it’s great that shipowners collaborate between themselves, the real potential lies in seamless supply chain collaboration. Our vessels only serve as part of the logistics of getting the goods or people from A to B. Cargo owners, traders, charterers, ports, energy supply, warehousing and land transportation are all part of a decarbonized solution. Is it easy to collaborate across this supply chain? No. Does it require new ways of working, new contract and aligned incentives? Yes. “Business as usual” will not cut it, and we need to start with being more transparent and sharing data.
S4S: If you could change one thing across the industry from your perspective, what this would be and why?
P.M.: I would like for the maritime industry to be more open-minded and to acknowledge that our future solutions are not found in our past. We need to think differently about how we operate and let the voices and ideas of our young talents be heard, coupled with the wisdom of experienced people with domain knowledge.
S4S: Looking ahead to 2050, what key message about sustainable shipping would you include in a time capsule for industry stakeholders to reflect on?
P.M.: “In 2025 we still had time to mitigate climate change. I hope we did our best and that shipping in 2050 is seen as a responsible, dynamic and attractive industry.”
The views presented are only those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of SAFETY4SEA and are for information sharing and discussion purposes only.
