The IMO states that annual CO2 emissions from the international and domestic shipping industries currently exceeds 1 billion tonnes per annum and are increasing. This figure is projected to almost treble by 2050, hindering efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

The sector is able to reduce emissions with fuel-efficient ships, using modern IMO-compliant engines, other currently available technologies and low sulphur fuel.

To date however it has been very difficult to identify which ships are the most energy efficient – an important driver of the uptake of environmental technologies.

ShippingEfficiency.org has been designed to address this problem, providing an objective tool for ship owners, operators, shippers and other stakeholders to make sustainability a key part of their decision-making processes. The site draws on work undertaken by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in developing an Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) which provides objective measures of the efficiency of both new and existing ships.

The shipping industry thus has quick and easy access to vessel efficiency data based on this universally applicable index.

EVDI™ & GHG Emissions
Rating Calculation
The Existing Vessel Design Index (EVDI™) and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Rating was developed by the ShippingEfficiency.org and RightShip to:
– increase information flows around international shipping’s energy efficiency; and
– help reduce the environmental impacts of the world’s shipping fleet.

Similar to the IMO MEPC’s Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI), EVDI™ measures a ship’s CO2 emissions, however unlike the EEDI that is applied new ships from 2013, the EVDI™ was designed to be applied to the existing fleet.

The EVDI™ is calculated using characteristics of the ship at build, incorporating parameters that include:
– ship capacity;
– engine power;
– design speed; and
– fuel consumption.

To determine a ship’s Existing Vessel Design Index (EVDI™) value, ShippingEfficiency.org sources reliable data from many independent sources, including:

– IHS Fairplay;
– RightShip’s Ship Vetting Information System (SVIS™);
– classification societies;
– owner’s data; and
– ship-sourced data.

The relative performance of a vessel is then presented using a standard European A to G scale based on the number of standard deviations a vessel varies from the average for similar sized vessels of the same ship type (the most efficient being A, least efficient being G).

A more comprehensive explanation of the EVDI™ and GHG Emissions Rating methodology can be found here.