Combining state-of-the-art emission reduction and efficiency improvement technologies in ship design and retrofitting for contributing to the "Fit for 55" package objective by 2030 (ZEWT Partnership)

Project outputs and results are expected to contribute to the following expected outcomes:

• Development of at least three market ready vessel design solutions to address short sea shipping, inland waterway transport and high seas shipping making innovative use of combinations of close to market (TRL 7 or higher) emission reduction and efficiency improvement technologies to reduce emissions from shipping in line with the expectations within the EUs “Fit for 55” legislative package.
• Quantitative assessment of the designs towards achieving significant emissions reductions consistent with the EU’s ‘Fit for 55’ package objectives and the IMO’s Carbon Intensity Indicator through verifiable KPI’s.
• Facilitation of the continuous improvement and upgrading of existing vessels to increase efficiency and reduce emissions through the measurement and bench marking of operational profiles.
• Quantification of the contribution towards cutting emissions from a range of emission reduction technologies on a life cycle basis. Including the separate and joint consideration of design and operations within relevant environments. Enable assessment of the retrofit and refurbishment options of applied emission reduction technologies.
• Support accelerated conversion of inland and maritime vessels s towards better energy efficiency and reduced emissions.
• Development of robust business models for the design concepts, to ensure a high probability of commercial European deployment and the expectation of becoming operational by 2030.

Legislative proposals within the EU’s “Fit for 55” package targeting the reduction of waterborne transport emissions will assess emissions reductions based on operational data collected within the framework of the EU’s MRV regulation. Internationally, for global maritime shipping, the forthcoming IMO Carbon Intensity Indicator and Data Collections System (DCS) will be used. Vessels visiting EU ports will need to provide data to ensure compliance with both MRV (EU) and DCS (IMO) data requirements. This change from assessing emission reductions based on design to the direct measurement and verification of actual operational emissions requires a new approach to design. Consequently, the vessel design process will need to employ modelling and simulation techniques which take into account the vessel’s expected operational profile and life cycle so as to ensure that the delivered vessel or modification will deliver the expected emission reductions in the “real world”

For new builds, present improvements in ship energy efficiency have reduced consumption by 15-30% compared to equivalent reference ships in 2008. Contributing to fit for 55 objectives, the challenge is to develop at least three concept vessels which will further improve energy efficiency by at least 20%, compared to a 2022 reference performance for equivalent ships.

This “design for operation” approach will integrate and combine both operational energy savings and emission reduction technologies. Several technologies and solutions to be combined and integrated should be chosen so as to provide the largest impact and these are expected to already be individually demonstrated or developed to TRL 7. This could for example concern various combinations of; power conversion/electrification /energy devices, sustainable climate neutral low emission fuels, HVAC, energy storage, operations, smart energy monitoring, renewables including wind assistance, hydrodynamics, cold ironing, slow steaming, just in time scheduling, propeller designs etc.

In order to address the above-mentioned challenge, proposals are expected to address all the following aspects:

• Energy system modelling and fast simulation assessment to demonstrate the expected energy efficiency gains and life-cycle emission reductions achieved by the resulting designs within their operating reference cases. A holistic/systemic approach should be applied to the design, which is to be based upon total vessel energy needs for use within reference operating profiles and business cases.
• A minimum of three vessel concept designs and use cases are expected to be developed including the following vessel types: short-sea, inland waterway and high-seas. For each vessel type, retrofit solutions for the baseline design (from 2008) should be proposed, as well as a completely new design.
• Development of an open-source design assessment tool which can be used to assess the operational Carbon Intensity of vessel designs.
• Development of decision-support or automation systems to facilitate the most effective implementation of operational energy efficiency improvements.
• Plans for exploitation and dissemination of results should include a strong business case and sound exploitation strategy. Development of business models to facilitate the deployment of the resulting vessel design concepts, in particular addressing financing, market needs and possibilities to support first of a kind deployment. Considering the potential of opportunities within EU support schemes such as the Connecting Europe Facility, Climate Change Innovation Fund and regional funds. Proposals are expected to demonstrate a clear and credible pipeline from the development to the operational deployment of the developed designs by 2030. This should include preliminary plans for scalability, commercialisation, and deployment (feasibility study, business plan) indicating the possible funding sources to be potentially used.

When appropriate, activities may also address the definition of a secure knowledge sharing platform to enable the necessary data-transfer to obtain detailed operational performance information.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on ‘Zero Emission Waterborne Transport’ (ZEWT). As such, projects resulting from this topic will be expected to report on results to the European Partnership ‘Zero Emission Waterborne Transport’ (ZEWT) in support of the monitoring of its KPIs.

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 7 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.