Energy Efficiency Initiatives

Zois Dagkaris, EURONAV Ship Management (Hellas) presented ‘’Energy Efficiency Initiatives’’ during the 2016 GREEN4SEA Conference & Awards. He stated that fuel efficiency is important to save cost, improve company’s position on the charter market and benefit the environment. Regulation and bunker prices have been always key drivers for energy efficiency. The ship managers have to take decisions on energy and air emission management strategy considering the charter market/operation profile, bunker prices, regulations and new technologies/services. All of these parameters are very unstable and change constantly. Key success factors supporting best decision are testing of pilot measures, transparency/monitoring needed, commitment/capabilities of staff, crew and top management commitment.

Fuel efficiency is important in order to save cost, improve the position in the market and benefit the environment. As we all know regulations and bunkers’ prices have always been key drivers for energy efficiency. The ship manager has to make decisions on energy and air emission management strategy considering market, operation profile, bunkering, regulations and new technology services; all these parameters are very unstable and constantly change. For example, we have the Bunker Price Fluctuation which impacts the return of investment for retrofit measures on new assets, the freight market. We need to comply with air emission regulations, meaning we have to select the available technology which influences the bunkering infrastructure. We also have to collect various measures and that means we need specialization and training in ship management companies.

The big question is which measures are resilient against these constant changes and which measures are worth implementing – cost and time needed for evaluation – what works, what not. We have two options: asset and operation. The one side includes asset related measures, like main dimension, propeller and propulsion improvement devices, the main auxiliary engines selections and the other side includes operational measures such as the voyage performance, voyage execution, ship performance, consumer usage and bunker management.

The key success factor for supporting our decisions: few measures, testing of pilot measures, transparency and monitoring, commitment, capability of staff, crew and top management.

EURONAV’s energy management strategy focuses on three important areas:

1. Organizational anchoring:

• Clear responsibility & accountability
• Fuel saving is a cross functional business

2. Reporting and monitoring:

• Invest in technology for fuel consumption & monitoring tools
• Focus on few, relevant KPIs with reference values / targets

3. Measures & Services Selection:

• Selected service providers with proven records
• Training combined with simple and clear SEEMP structure
• Retrofit measures that are measurable (nothing less 2% promised savings)

We have a simple SEEMP which help us to focus fewer and more punchy measures ; that means for quite a long time we select some vessels, we test them at least for one year and, based on the end results, we decide if we proceed for this measure, or we abandon and we continue with other measures.

Also, the SEEMP measures are complemented with dashboards. We have management view, this is tailor made for us relevant to what the management to focus on consists in, we have the fleet view-the technical manager and fleet managers- and lastly we have the single vessel view that is tailor made to each vessel. In this way we create transparency for better decision making. For us, SEEMP is a decision making tool in order to answer to questions such as “Is my ship consuming more or less overtime compared to other sister ships? What are the drivers in order to improve my ship? What more can I do?”

We have concluded that the most resilient measures are the following:

From our experience, the crew has to apply SEEMP and Fuel Saving Measures. They need to use shore side support to be consistent, to work with Dashboard, to make On-board meetings part of their routine monthly meetings, the energy savings, initiatives in general and they also ought to discuss andask questions to the shore organization. The crew should share ideas, best practices and feedback on fuel saving measures with the shore organization. Training is also very important. If we do not train the people, especially for operational measures, we cannot expect to have a tangible result.
Above text is an edited article of Zois Dagkaris presentation during the 2016 GREEN4SEA Conference & Awards.

You may view his presentation video by clicking here

Click here to view all the presentations of 2016 GREEN4SEA Conference & Awards

The views presented hereabove are only those of the author and not necessarily those of  GREEN4SEA and are for information sharing and discussion  purposes only.

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About Zois Dagkaris, Head of Fleet Energy Management, EURONAV Ship Management (Hellas) Ltd

Zois Dagkaris has been working for Euronav for the past 9 years; for the last two years he is responsible for the Energy Management & vessel’s related upgrades for Euronav’s fleet. Prior to his present position, Zois served as Technical Superintendent and later as Sr. Project Engineer for Offshore Projects (FSO Conversions and Technical Tenders). He has also worked in Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems in Naval and Defense projects for 8 years prior joining Euronav. He holds a Master degree on Mechanical Engineering from National Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration from Piraeus University.