Maritime Emission Manager Course

The purpose of this part is to enlighten the reader about fleet management issues and the best ways to implement best practices for a sustainable fleet with a view to environmental protection and cost reduction.

A sustainable comprehensive fleet management policy must include:

• A policy to reduce risks and costs, e.g. accidents
• A policy for the protection of the environment
• A policy for the efficient planning of trips
• A policy to increase competitiveness
• A shipping company’s internal structure can be seen in the diagram below;

Figure 34: Internal structure of a shipping company (MariEMS 2017).

Ships come in a variety of types and sizes. Some ship types are the following; tankers, bulk carriers, container ships, refrigerated vessels, Roll-on–Roll-off (Ro–Ro) vessels, ferries, passenger ships, fishing vessels, service/supply vessels, barges, research ships, dredgers, naval vessels, sometimes a combination vessels and other special purpose vessels. The types of ships are usually even further categorized in sub-types depending on the size of the ship. To measure the size of a ship we have to take into consideration its weight carrying capacity and its volume carrying capacity.

There is a large variety to the cargo carried by ships like the ships themselves. The cargo of a ship can be consumer goods, unprocessed and processed food, livestock, industrial equipment and even raw materials. All these different cargos come with a variety of packaging all to make the cargo handling more efficient.

Ships operate between ports. Ports are used for resupplying and for discharging waste. Ports impose physical limitations on the size of the ships and charge fees for their services. Port operations involve a lot of people, both at management level and at operational level. The port is a physical entity and is managed by a port authority. In addition, depending on the size of the port, any number of businesses may be found inside.

Issues of governance, control and ownership are very important to any discussion of environmental management in ports. The majority of ports are characterized by privately owned dock facilities and in these instances, control of property and operations lie with each private property owner. One of the main issues that ports are facing is local air quality. This is caused due to air pollutants, in particular the CO₂ emissions. In ports, air emissions and energy consumptions are primarily due to ships. Around 85% of emissions come from containerships and tankers but despite that the most contaminants ships in ports are the cruise ships. Containerships have short port stays, but high emissions during these stays. However, there are other facilities that contribute to air emissions and energy consumption in ports. Future forecasts indicate that most of shipping emissions in ports are estimated to grow fourfold up to 2050, with Asia and Africa seeing the sharpest increases in emissions, due to strong port traffic growth and limited mitigation measures. Despite the fact that a lot of ports have developed regulations to reduce shipping emissions, they would need wider application in order to be truly successful (MariEMS 2017).