MEPTEK

Project description

The aim of the project has been to carry out a comprehensive analysis of marine transport emission reduction techniques, their effectiveness and applicability. The most important methods have been literature research, on-board emission measurement in ships, and analysis of emission data. Based on research done during this project, an emission comparison tool that works in the Excel environment has been created.

Applying the tool, different types of ships can be compared in a user-friendly way. The original aim of the project was to carry out on-board emission measurements quite extensively and thus, create a large emission data bank for researchers, but the start of the COVID-19-pandemic in spring 2020 prevented the emission measurements from being carried out before the summer 2022.

Finally, on-board measurements also started, but due to the pandemic, the original quantitative goals were not reached. On the other hand, during this research period, a lot of conversation regarding to maritime emissions has been on-topic: The global sulfur emission limit was tightened at the beginning of 2020 and the Baltic Sea became a NECA area in 2021. The European Commission published a climate action plan called “Fit for 55” in July 2021, including several proposals to reduce maritime transport emissions too. In addition, the aim of the FuelEUMaritime proposal affects the composition of the fuels used in maritime transport, which aims to reduce/aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the maritime sector. Finally, in 2022, Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the energy crisis that developed as an indirect result significantly increased the price of LNG, which remarkably changed the economic competitiveness of different fuel options.