Ship Energy Efficiency: Here is All You Need to Know

Energy efficiency is the big deal these days. If we use less energy, not only we save the energy but we contribute towards lesser pollution too.

After all, the greenest energy is the energy you do not have to produce.

As a responsible citizen of this earth, if I wish to use lesser energy than I am using now there are few things I can do.

• I can run my car to lesser miles than I ran last month so that I burn less fuel. This can be by using a bicycle for the shorter distance or using shorter routes for the travel
• I can buy a car which has better mileage than my present car. So even after running the same distance, I have now used less fuel than the last month.

Ship energy efficiency is not much different than this.

For a very long time, ship energy efficiency was voluntary and ship owners were expected to understand their responsibility towards energy efficiency.

However, IMO felt a need to make the concept of “energy efficiency” as mandatory and thus the Annex VI of the MARPOL was amended to include chapter IV for ship energy efficiency.

In this post, we will discuss everything we need to know about the requirements of the ship energy efficiency.

Let us start.

Ship energy efficiency

When we talk about energy efficiency, there are not one but many way by which this can be achieved.

As I used the example of using a car.

We can buy a hybrid car. We can get the car serviced at regular interval so that it continues to be at its best at all times. And we can use the car only when it is required.

All these are the ways for using our car in energy efficiency ways.

For ship energy efficiency, the terms used may be different but a parallel can be drawn with these examples.

Here is what the concept of ship energy efficiency looks like.

So the ship energy efficiency is about these few terms

• Energy efficiency design index (EEDI)
• Ship energy efficiency management plan (SEEMP)
• Energy efficiency operation index (EEOI)
• IMO Fuel oil consumption Data reporting

When a vessel complies with these requirements, the ship is issued a certificate named “International energy efficiency certificate”.

Let us discuss all these terms in detail.

EEDI (Energy efficiency design index)

With the concept of EEDI, the aim of the IMO is to have the ships fitted with engines and equipments that are less polluting.

EEDI is the measure of the amount of CO2 emitted by the ship per capacity mile (tonne-mile).

Let me explain the term “tonne-mile”, just in case you have not heard it before.

Tonne-mile is the unit of work done by a ship.

Let us say that a ship with deadweight 20000 T travels 2 NM. It has done 40000 tonne-mile of work.

Now coming back to EEDI.

EEDI is the amount of CO2 emitted by the ship (in grams) per tonne-mile of work.

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