Efficiency of new ships decreasing, says report

• Freight rates bounce back
As the global shipbuilders jostle to meet the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) design for the Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) standards, latest report has revealed that the average design efficiency of new bulk carriers, oil tankers and gas carriers was worse in 2016.

Meanwhile, the global freight rates appeared to have bounced back from the 2016 levels, buoyed by better supply and demand fundamentals.The report recently commissioned by Green groups Transport & Environment (T&E) and Seas At Risk, also showed that the share of new ships complying with future efficiency standards also decreased in 2016, while the design efficiency of containerships and general cargo ships appears to be stagnating after a period of improvement.

The data also confirmed earlier findings that a considerable proportion of new ships are over-complying with the IMO’s EEDI standard indicating that the requirements needed to be strengthened if it is to stimulate the uptake of new technologies and drive efficiency improvements.

The group said that tightening of the EEDI requirements in 2017 and 2018 “should be a priority for the IMO and that proposals from industry and some governments to delay should be resisted.”

Shipping Officer at T&E, Faig Abbasov, said: “Despite a clear trend of increasing over-compliance with ship design efficiency standards over recent years, ships built in 2016 mark a clear break from this tendency.

“Unless EEDI requirements are tightened, there is a risk that this backsliding could continue back to efficiency levels merely required by regulation. The significant gap between achieved efficiency levels and what is required by the regulation only underlines the urgency to ensure the requirements match the levels of efficiency that industry has clearly shown it is capable of achieving,” Abbasov added.

The analysis showed that 14 per cent of bulk carriers, 52 per cent of containerships, 23 per cent of tankers, 21 per cent of gas carriers and 55per cent of general cargo ships that entered the fleet in 2016 already met the 2025 design efficiency standard.

Senior Policy Advisor at Seas At Risk, John Maggs, said: “Tighter ship design efficiency standards are an obvious low hanging fruit as the IMO embarks on the development of a comprehensive strategy to tackle climate change.

“The study shows both the potential of design standards to mitigate future ship greenhouse gas emissions and the very real danger that if the IMO doesn’t act quickly then hard-won design efficiency gains will be lost,” Maggs added.

Meanwhile, Global Shipping Consultancy firm, Drewry. Stated that global spot market freight rates were more than one-third higher in the first half of 2017 with big increases across most trade lanes.

While there is still some ground to be made up to get above pre-2015 levels there is no doubt that the pendulum is swinging quite fast towards a carriers’ market.Drewry’s Global Freight Rate Index was some 36 per cent higher after six months of 2017 against the same period in 2016. When compared to the first half of 2015, spot rates for the first half of 2017 were still 4 per cent lower. “Despite some seasonal erosion, rates this year overtook monthly averages for both 2015 and 2016 from April onwards,” it stated.