Ship operational efficiency portal launched at the Sustainable Ocean Summit
At the World Ocean Council’s Sustainable Ocean Summit, Carbon War Room, exactEarth, and University Maritime Advisory Service (UMAS) launched BetterFleet, a free-to-access ship operational efficiency portal, on ShippingEfficiency.org. Based on similar data and methods used by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to assess the world fleet, BetterFleet shows how efficiently an individual vessel has operated over the past year and compares it against its peers.
BetterFleet provides free-to-access efficiency data to support the shipping industry’s many different stakeholders, and particularly those who use it as part of their supply chain, to understand the comparative energy efficiency of different vessels and identify actions to reduce emissions and costs.
Jules Kortenhorst, CEO, Carbon War Room and Rocky Mountain Institute , commented: “BetterFleet’s free, transparent data will help shippers save money through more efficient operations.”
Galen Hon, shipping operation manager with Carbon War Room, added: “Shippers and cargo owners often specify how the ship must be run, how it is loaded, and what schedule it adheres to. These factors strongly affect operational efficiency. This is particularly true in the time charter market, where the cargo owner hires the entire vessel. It can also be true in the spot market, where supply chain demands can indirectly determine how ships are operated. BetterFleet delivers greater understanding to shippers and charterers of the impact of their supply-chain demands on ship efficiency.
BetterFleet displays metrics and visuals to provide a holistic view of the ship’s operation including an out of ten score summarizing the overall performance of the ship over the previous 12 months compared with ships of similar type and size.
Captain Kavil Madhu Nair, vice president, Rickmers Shipmangement (Singapore), who trialled BetterFleet prior to launch, commented: “We see real potential for BetterFleet to help owners, managers and shippers to re-shape the market.”
BetterFleet hopes to build on ShippingEfficiency.org’s other tool, the GHG Emissions Rating, which launched in 2010 with partner RightShip. Today, 20% of all shipped tonnage is now transported on ships vetted for efficiency using the GHG Emissions Rating. The tools are very different. The GHG Emissions Rating provides information on how efficient a ship is originally designed to be, whereas the new BetterFleet tool shows how efficiently a ship has operated based on its technical specifications and how it is used over a specific period of time.
