Shipping sets innovation agenda

Alas­tair Marsh Chief exec­u­tive, Lloy­d’s Reg­is­ter

At the end of 2015, the Paris Agree­ment con­firmed it was not a ques­tion of whether cli­mate change should be addressed, but a ques­tion of how, and it was clear that every­one will have to con­tribute.

Ship­ping is the most effi­cient mode of trans­port and it cur­rent­ly accounts for 2.3 per cent of glob­al CO₂ emis­sions. How­ev­er, in a study on GHGs in 2014, the Inter­na­tion­al Mar­itime Orga­ni­za­tion (IMO) antic­i­pat­ed emis­sions will rise in all future sce­nar­ios, start­ing at 50 per cent and ris­ing to 250 per cent under a busi­ness-as-usu­al sce­nario.

The tem­per­a­ture goals of the Paris Agree­ment, to sta­bilise tem­per­a­ture increas­es to below 2C and aim for 1.5C, place a chal­leng­ing bur­den on all sec­tors. There will be no space in the car­bon bud­get to allow the emis­sions of ship­ping, cur­rent­ly approx­i­mate­ly 1 giga­tonne a year, to be ignored.

In April 2018, the IMO adopt­ed its ini­tial GHG strat­e­gy, estab­lish­ing a sig­nif­i­cant ambi­tion for the ship­ping sec­tor to reduce GHGs by at least 50 per cent by 2050, based on a 2008 base­line. There is also a strong empha­sis on reduc­ing by 100 per cent by 2050 if this is shown to be pos­si­ble.

“When the IMO speaks about some­thing like this, the whole indus­try has to lis­ten,” says Alas­tair Marsh, chief exec­u­tive at Lloyd’s Reg­is­ter (LR). “This deal pro­vides a clear sig­nal to the indus­try that the over­ar­ch­ing aim is to end the use of fos­sil fuels.

“Fos­sil fuels pro­vide us with a high-den­si­ty, low-cost ener­gy source that is com­par­a­tive­ly easy to store, han­dle and trans­port. In terms of ship­ping, we have had decades to opti­mise the design, main­te­nance and oper­a­tion of the ship­ping sys­tem around these fuels. As the world’s atti­tude towards fos­sil fuels is chang­ing, ship­ping is work­ing to find a non-fos­sil, zero-emis­sion and sus­tain­able ener­gy source, but it’s a com­plex task.”

LR has worked with sev­er­al aca­d­e­m­ic part­ners to pro­duce research reports look­ing at fuel and tech­nol­o­gy trends for the marine indus­try, includ­ing Ship­ping in Chang­ing Cli­mates, a $4‑million mul­ti-uni­ver­si­ty and cross-indus­try research project fund­ed by the Engi­neer­ing and Phys­i­cal Sci­ences Research Coun­cil, and Uni­ver­si­ty Mar­itime Advi­so­ry Ser­vices, a part­ner­ship between the Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don Ener­gy Insti­tute and MATRANS,

These stud­ies have made it clear that the indus­try needs to advance think­ing beyond mar­gin­al gains in ener­gy effi­cien­cy and alter­na­tive fos­sil fuels, and zero-emis­sion ves­sels will need to be enter­ing the fleet in 2030 and form a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of new builds from then on if the sec­tor is meet the ambi­tion set out by the IMO.

“This is prob­a­bly the biggest sin­gle chal­lenge fac­ing the indus­try, over and above all the glob­al trade move­ments and changes in trad­ing pat­terns,” says Mr Marsh. LR has com­mit­ted a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of
its research and devel­op­ment spend­ing and efforts on look­ing at how viable zero-car­bon fuels are as a scal­able alter­na­tive.

“It’s things like bat­tery-elec­tric pow­er and try­ing to store elec­tric pow­er, which is a mas­sive engi­neer­ing chal­lenge, but also things like ammo­nia, poten­tial­ly, or hydro­gen,” he says.

“It is hard to pre­dict the future, but we expect to see a diverse range of zero-car­bon tech­nolo­gies and fuels deployed across the world’s fleet. There are a range of inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies already being pilot­ed and deployed, and we expect the curve of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion to increase with the adop­tion of this strat­e­gy.”

Run­ning par­al­lel with the envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges fac­ing shipown­ers is a rel­a­tive­ly over­due dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the indus­try. Count­less oth­er sec­tors have already seen much of their process­es and mod­els over­hauled by the new data insights that come from pro­vid­ing dig­i­tal ser­vices. Now, it seems, it is the turn of ship­ping.

We expect to see a diverse range of zero-car­bon tech­nolo­gies and fuels deployed across the world’s fleet

The hype sur­round­ing big data when it first rose to promi­nence five orso years ago unsur­pris­ing­ly caused many shipown­ers in an old and tra­di­tion­al indus­try to raise a scep­ti­cal eye­brow. How­ev­er, with much of the tech­nol­o­gy involved in data ana­lyt­ics now at a mature stage, it’s clear that it can be applied to very spe­cif­ic indus­try prob­lems.

“It shouldn’t be digi­ti­sa­tion for the sake of it, so let’s not talk about this won­der­ful big-data world when in real­i­ty it means dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent sec­tors,” says Mr Marsh. “How­ev­er, in ship­ping there is now a mas­sive advan­tage to be gained in using data in the right way in terms of very prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions.”

The air­line indus­try has con­sid­er­ably advanced its approach to con­stant­ly mon­i­tor­ing engine per­for­mance, in real time, due to the capa­bil­i­ties avail­able with data-ana­lyt­ics tools and Mr Marsh believes ships can now ben­e­fit mas­sive­ly from sim­i­lar tech­nol­o­gy.

“You can take engine per­for­mance data in real time from sen­sors, which are embed­ded in most marine engines on ships today, har­vest that data and apply data-ana­lyt­ics tools. Up until two or three years ago, that hadn’t been done at all in ship­ping,” he says.

“You can start to get some very inter­est­ing data about how to opti­mise the con­trol set­tings of cer­tain engines in cer­tain weath­er con­di­tions and modes, and you can start to improve the opti­mi­sa­tion of fuel effi­cien­cy as a result of that.”

LR, which has been a trust­ed advis­er to the mar­itime indus­try for close to 260 years, now pro­vides ser­vices that enable shipown­ers to start har­ness­ing the use of data to improve their process­es and effi­cien­cies. It is inno­va­tion in this area that under­pins a strat­e­gy to build on LR’s long her­itage and tra­di­tion­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion ser­vices.

Due to this her­itage, as well as advis­ing shipown­ers when build­ing and main­tain­ing ships, LR also advis­es the IMO when for­mu­lat­ing the rules shipown­ers will have to com­ply with and iden­ti­fy­ing prac­ti­cal issues that should be built in.

“When I talk to clients about their chal­lenges, they tell me that we prob­a­bly know as much about their ships as they do, but we’re also very aware of the big­ger-pic­ture impli­ca­tions around rule changes and oth­er chal­lenges,” says Mr Marsh. “At this major inflex­ion point for the mar­itime indus­try, we’re invest­ing heav­i­ly to become a more inno­v­a­tive organ­i­sa­tion and trust­ed advis­er to our clients for 260 more years to come.”

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