The future of shipping is challenging and many of the solutions arrived at will have to be technical ones.

"New regulations came / are coming into force for ship recycling, ballast water treatment, emission reductions, coat performance standards, fuel efficiency and cold ironing. We need to plot these developments quite early on, and we as an industry need to work closely with all concerned parties to timely solve the environmental demands, in particular,” says Claus Tantzen, the Technical Manager of the Support Team at E.R. Schiffahrt.

E.R. Schiffahrt is a ship owning and ship management company with activities in the container, bulk and offshore vessel markets. It currently controls 124 vessels in service and under construction – its container fleet consists of 81 vessels (432,809 teu), of which 13 are under construction (112,619 teu), making E.R. Schiffahrt a leading, global container ship operator.

Joint focus
“We spend quite a bit of time and effort on R&D relating to the important issues we just mentioned, with a lot of focus on how to optimize container ships to comply with and be ahead of regulations,” continues Tantzen. “We are quite confident that we can solve whatever issues we face in the future, but our greater concern is that there may be non-unified requirements. Here the cooperation with classification societies is very important. We see a trend in which governments are increasingly seeking advice from class on environmental issues – and most issues these days can be included under the environmental umbrella. Here it is essential that class also cooperates closely with owners to ensure that class has the right hands-on input it needs to be able to advise governments. We are in favour of this role for class, which has the competence and credibility to advise governments, but it requires a joint focus based on frequent interaction between class and owners.

“The IMO meetings are attended by many government experts who are often furnished with input based on MEPC meetings. Here it is essential to provide the IMO with practical recommendations as a basis for future regulations. The better this process can be, the more constructive this is for the future of shipping in that it demonstrates that the industry takes responsibility for and the lead in complying with future demands.”

Practical example – electrical standards
“Cold ironing is a topic of increased focus and R&D. The topic is also quite challenging when you consider reefer capacities of modern container ships. The power needed here is not all that minute and the ship equipment needed to handle the power demand, including any electrical adaptors, frequency convertors, contactors and switchgears, is a topic that needs some good solutions. Coming up with the best solutions for unified standards here will require some good work. The discussions should also focus on the legal issues here as there are quite a few still to be sorted out,” says Tantzen.

In addition, of course, we should keep in focus the overall objective of cold ironing, that is to reduce emissions, and evaluate also in that context if better solutions are available to achieve these aims, for instance through the vessels own capabilities, instead of the shoreside supplied power.

“The revision of MARPOL Annex VI is another matter, as this stipulates requirements as to the emission reduction within a relatively short ample period. The global availability for respective post combustion treatment plants until the due date will be challenging.
“To summarise – we focus on all the topics under the heading environment – and the solutions for the industry must be based on practical input. We are doing our utmost to work closely with class and regulators to ensure good, practical solutions which will demonstrate that shipping takes this issue very seriously,” concludes Tantzen.