Shipping should have interaction with the decarbonization realities that lie forward by altering the best way it crafts maritime laws to mirror its place within the interconnected, interdependent world economic system, says Eero Lehtovaara, Head of Regulatory & Public Affairs, ABB Marine & Ports.
ABB Marine & Ports Head of Regulatory & Public Affairs, Eero Lehtovaara has carved out an uncommon – and presumably distinctive – function within the maritime business over latest years, as a ‘stakeholder’ concurrently conscious of the views of householders, seafarers, producers and regulators.
A Master Mariner with company expertise so as to add to his industrial seagoing knowhow, Lehtovaara acknowledges the essential function collaboration performs in assembly the transport business’s purpose for net-zero greenhouse fuel emissions by round 2050. He additionally believes maritime laws want an overhaul, in order that built-in digital applied sciences could make a full and decisive contribution.
“The industry is an ecosystem which includes owners, managers, mariners, shipyards, equipment makers, designers, research institutes and class societies: all of them are crucial,” says Lehtovaara. “Shipping is the most efficient way of transporting goods, whether considered tons per mile or emissions per ton-mile. However, assuming that a miracle is not going to happen, it must also become more efficient very quickly to meet the sustainability goals now set out for it.
“Rather than focusing on individual parts of the industry, or fractions of it, we should use a holistic approach to evaluate the gains that are available to the industry as whole.”
Regulators are absolutely conscious that speedy advances in digital expertise are altering the best way ships are operated.
“The maritime education and training I had was comparable to what most seafarers out there are going through today, and it is not sufficient preparation for what’s going on onboard ships at the moment,” says Lehtovaara.
“The industry is an ecosystem which includes owners, managers, mariners, shipyards, equipment makers, designers, research institutes and class societies: all of them are crucial,” stated Eero Lehtovaara, Head of Regulatory & Public Affairs, ABB Marine & Ports
Image Courtesy ABB Marine and Ports
Issues of Separation
Today, ships are stuffed with standalone proprietary applied sciences. Two methods working in storm circumstances can base their analyses on totally different effectivity parameters, for instance: a seafarer appearing in full compliance with coaching necessities can discover that one overrides the opposite in an sudden method, compromising security.
“In SOLAS*, every ship system is considered independently, while the way to evaluate integrated system is based on outcomes. SOLAS is also descriptive, which is not compatible with software. You can’t describe a code.”
The International Maritime Organization’s carbon depth indicator (CII) and EU Emissions Trading Scheme are solely early milestones on the regulatory path to web zero emissions from ships by round 2050. Already, the FuelEU Maritime Initiative favors ‘well-to-wake’ over ‘tank-to-wake’ because the measure for of the impression of ship greenhouse fuel emissions, with IMO quickly anticipated to observe.
With all ranges of society more and more reliant on digital expertise, the progressive response from transport is to have interaction extra carefully with resolution suppliers on creating requirements and laws to assist digitalization nurture decarbonization.
“I don’t say that crews must be software engineers, but there is no going back: there has to be both a systematic approach to understanding digital systems and how they fit together across shipping, and to the vetting of the systems in service.”
Integrated for Sustainability
A member of technical committees with main class societies, Lehtovaara began the International Council on Combustion Engines (CIMAC) Industry technique Group Digitalization and, because the summer time of 2024 has been a board member specializing in maritime digitalization. He is the present chair of One Sea – the affiliation of autonomous ship expertise frontrunners and he additionally chairs the Waterborne Technology Platform, which offers coverage steering to the European Commission on maritime R&D. With business investments in zero-emission waterborne transport R&D per yr for the interval 2021 – 2030 amounting to €3.3 billion, the EU is including €530 million by means of the Horizon Europe program.
In November-December 2023, Lehtovaara additionally represented the maritime business as a part of the Finnish delegation at COP28 in Dubai. His participation included a “Transition in Transportation” panel session masking scale back transport’s carbon footprint and speed up the commercialized scaling-up of options.
New power saving units, various fuels, carbon seize, batteries and gas cell energy will all present essential pathways to maritime decarbonization, Lehtovaara stresses. “But there is not going to be one solution that meets every objective, given the diversity of ship types, ship ages, routes and services.”
What can be already identified is that each one the options proposed to advance maritime decarbonization – from CII to emissions buying and selling – are optimized by formalizing options for knowledge sharing. Lehtovaara says regulators ought to reconceive the ship as a system to mirror this actuality.
“Perhaps this sounds like a small thing. It changes everything,” says Lehtovaara.
Understanding the ship as a system is a degree of departure for regulating the interface between the human within the loop and digitalized maritime expertise.
Technology as Tool
“Technology should be helping to make the lives of seafarers easier, as well as making ships operate more efficiently. But the advisory products which support better decision-making aren’t governed by specific rules or third-party approvals that examine how they affect the ship as system.”
Lehtovaara says the mannequin for knowledge collaboration between engine and different methods would come with an overview of requirements for safe knowledge change, vendor neutrality and knowledge property safety. The work would additionally demand a overview of SOLAS formulations for the design, planning and testing of ships, and a regulatory framework which takes account of the ‘graceful deterioration’ of digital methods.
The ‘ship as system’ method could be influential if thought of as a part of the IMO’s overview of its formulation of the CII, or as EU requirements evolve to assist FuelEU maritime necessities to have 90 p.c of pier sides in ports to ship energy from shore by 2030, Lehtovaara suggests.
“As [IMO Secretary General] Arsenio Dominguez said recently, regulators have come to realize that that they were optimistic with the CII. Its impact so far has been to cut the average speed of the fleet by almost one knot. This means ships in service are less efficient and, globally, it’s been the same as reducing ship capacity substantially.
“One response might be to build more ships, but even a shameless opportunist would acknowledge that this defeats the entire objective of the CII regulation.”
A greater response would contain enhancing understanding of the relationships of the world’s inhabitants, GDP and commerce, and the worldwide transport business wanted to assist them. Where transport’s contribution to ‘carbon intensity’ is anxious, this would want to incorporate restraint on any haste to reform CII till a greater understanding of the impression of fixing vessel speeds is established.
*International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) – the worldwide maritime treaty that units minimal security requirements within the building, tools and operation of service provider ships.
