During the 2023 SAFETY4SEA Singapore Forum, Capt. Satinder Virdi, Principal Consultant, Head of Research and Development, Maritime Advisory, DNV Singapore Pte. Ltd. gave a presentation on the future of MARPOL regulations. His presentation included a thorough exploration of compliance strategies, shedding light on the various options available to the industry.
Table Of Contents
- CII Regulation (MARPOL)
- Available Options
- GHG Strategy as per MEPC 80
In the end of the day, what we are talking is how do we minimize emission of carbon in going into the environment and that’s what we are trying to save our environment and the enhance the climate.
CII Regulations MARPOL Convention 4
- Revised as per IMO RESOLUTION MEPC.328(76) (MEPC: Marine Environmental Protection Committee, IMO)
- AMENDMENTS (On going process as per Climate initiatives)
- Current: 2021 Revised MARPOL Annex VI
- Entered in force on 1 November 2022
The basic guideline is for MARPOL, so every few years we have changes in MARPOL and in MARPOL Annex 6, which covers air pollution. Changes happen every year, so the last one that happened was for the CII regulation. That’s the one we’re talking about that came out in November. The IMO has been talking about this for the last 10 years or so because these are the changes that are coming in, but they were not formalized or documented. They were documented last year and that is one of the reasons why this year all ship owners are required to rate their individual ships from A to E based on how well they are doing in terms of carbon emissions.
The regulatory framework to reduce GHG emissions
The IMO gave their first GHG strategy in 2018 and this year in MEPC80 they released the second GHG strategy for 2023, so this is a fundamental part of how we’re going to make sure that things are going in an upward direction in terms of saving the climate.
In 2018, it was probably shown that shipping contributes 2.5% of the global emission of pollution in the world, and in 2023, it was found that it is 2.9%. It has increased a little bit.
The things that have happened in the last year, the maritime industry is now able to document how much fuel is being used by each ship, and that is a very good measure of how much pollution is being caused by ships around the world. No other industry is coordinated in this way.
This is an item that every shipowner has a responsibility to report as of today. Where is my rating of the individual ship is it between A to E. So this is just a summary slide that we help shipowners decide. Declare where you stand. You can do it yourself, you don’t need third party intervention, but of course if the fleet sizes are larger, we’ll do the work for you and we’ll make a register for you and tell you this is where you stand.
If the ships are in D and E category, you need to have a plan how you will be taking measures to increase their performance from next 3 years. You need to have that, so it has been given a lot of time has been given to ship owners to comply.
We have 10 years of time that has been given and we have been discussing this. This is a time of regulation, yes by the end of this year you have to have a register to declare the CII rating of every ship and from next year Port State Control can go on board your ship and start checking the documents.
Overall, what a ship owner can do is look at the design, they can look at the operational measures and they can decide what can be improved. They have a lot of options on their table, they can optimize their machinery, they can go with a streamlined propellers and stern to reduce their drag, they can go for alternative fuels or they can do some energy harvesting by putting some new novel methods that are on the table or they can do the operational measures.
EEXI was the first step, followed by the CII assessment, so this is a historical part of it. In today’s word what can you do, several options are available, if you just do technical and operational measures you can improve your performance by about 5% and if you do speed reduction vessel utilization, based on vessel size or go for alternative roots, there is a possibility to reduce up to 20%.
Greenhouse Gas Strategy as per MEPC 80
In July of this year, they came down with a new trajectory and they want to even go stricter than that and the goal is Net Zero by 2050.
From 2026- 2027 we will have new rules which will tell us how to reduce further. The new goal is to reduce at least by 20% the total greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Above article has been edited from Capt. Satinder’s Virdi presentation during the 2023 SAFETY4SEA Singapore Forum.
Explore more by watching his video presentation here below
The views presented are only those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of SAFETY4SEA and are for information sharing and discussion purposes only.
