SEEMP main features
Shipping is a relatively efficient mode of transport compared to land and air when you consider the CO2 emissions produced per mile that each tonne of cargo is transported. However, shipping is also coming under increased scrutiny to lower its GHG by the international community and, under its remit, the IMO is looking at promoting measures to control these by improving ship efficiency through better management and implementation of best practice. The SEEMP provides a means to formally capture processes by which a ship owner can seek to improve the environmental efficiency aspects of their operations both on-board each of their ships as well as company-wide. The SEEMP is a ‘live’ document, containing energy improvement measures identified by the ship owner that will be kept on-board each ship. The document will be reviewed regularly to establish the relevance and impact of each measure on ship and fleet operations. Each SEEMP will be ship specific but should be linked to a broader corporate energy management policy of the ship owner. In some cases, the SEEMP may form part of the ship’s Safety Management System (SMS) and many ship owners will already have an Environmental Management System (EMS) under ISO 14001 which contains relevant practices for environmental improvement that may augment the SEEMP. There are four key processes that the SEEMP must address and describe and together they form a continuous improvement process. Each process, taken from the SEEMP Guidelines (MEPC.213 (63), has been summarized in the following sections (Ziarati et al, MariFuture, Development Papers, 2018-2019).