Ship time in Port and Just-in-Time Operation Introduction
International shipping is the most energy efficient mode of cargo transport in world trade but unfortunately is also a major producer of NOx, SOx and CO2 emissions. The existing measures being EEDI (Energy Efficiency Design Index) for new ships and SEEMP (Ship Energy Efficiency Management Plan) for all ships. With the current debates on further measures and fuel consumption measurement and reporting, new regulations in this area are forthcoming. When it comes to ports, there have been limited studies on port operation / management and its contribution to ship energy efficiency. The main reason for this may be the lack of IMO’s regulatory authorities on ports because the IMO’s main focus is on ships and international shipping rather than ports that are mainly regarded as national entities. Despite this lack of regulatory focus, marine ports are important for shipping energy efficiency and in particular they play a major role in delivering an energy efficient ship operation.
Port operation has impacts on both of the above cases. For example, when it comes to the energy efficient ship operations, reduced ship speed at sea is closely related to the minimization of a ship’s time in port. A ship’s time in port will be referred to here as ship’s “port time”. Reduction in port time through the high-quality port operations allows shipping lines to improve the operational efficiency via reduced ship speed and thus fuel consumption. This calls for examination of all aspects of port operation in order to find practical ways to cut down on ship port time. The main goal of this section is to investigate the operational issues on how time in port affects the efficient ship operation in terms of operating costs, GHG emissions and other externalities and methodologies for reducing not only the ship-in-port time but also improve other aspects of ship handling that could reduce a ship’s fuel consumption (MariEMS 2017).