The logic of business vs. the logic of energy management practice: understanding the choices and effects of energy consumption monitoring systems in shipping companies

Abstract

a b s t r a c tA major part of the world fleet of more than 47,000 merchant ships operates under conditions that hamper energy efficiency and efforts to cut CO 2 emissions. Valid and reliable data sets on ships' energy consumption are often missing in shipping markets and within shipping organizations, leading to the non-implementation of cost-effective energy efficiency measures. Policy makers are aiming to remedy this, e.g., through the EU Monitoring, Verification and Reporting scheme. In this paper, current practices for energy consumption monitoring in ship operations are explored based on interviews with 55 professionals in 34 shipping organizations in Denmark. Best practices, which require several years to implement, are identified, as are common challenges in implementing such practicesdrelated to data collection, incentives for data misreporting, data analysis problems, as well as feedback and communication problems between ship and shore. This study shows how the logic of good energy consumption monitoring practices conflict with common business practices in shipping companies e e.g., through short-term vessel charters and temporary ship organizations e which in turn can explain the slow adoption of energy efficiency measures in the industry. This study demonstrates a role for policy makers or other third parties in mandating or standardizing good energy consumption monitoring practices beyond the present requirements.

Green Shipping Practices of Shipping Firms

“…Lastly, showing that adopting GSP not only improves environmental performance but also productivity performance of a shipping firm [67], this study can serve as an encouragement for shipping firms to adopt GSP. In addition, recent studies by Poulsen and Johnson [68] and Kitada and Ölçer [69] show that energy consumption practices in shipping companies often conflict with common business practices and human element should be additionally included for better understanding the practices.…”

Decarbonizing the international shipping industry: Solutions and policy recommendations

“…It is possible to develop a protocol for pooling and utilizing vessel performance data with the research community without compromising business secrets. Doing so would open up more fuel saving potentials with additional analysis that can yield important operational insights (Poulsen and Johnson, 2016). A good practice in this respect is the US-based smart manufacturing leadership coalition and Germany's platform industries 4.0 initiative for researchers to overcome barriers to discovery and access and use factory-level data to make manufacturing processes more energy efficient, profitable, and sustainable (Kusiak, 2017).…”

Adoption and use of energy-monitoring technology in ship officers’ communities of practice

“…One of the allegedly most detrimental barriers is the lack of valid and reliable information on energy consumption. Consequentially, information on the potential improvements in energy efficiency related to the various available technical and operational measures is often not available (Jafarzadeh and Utne 2014;Poulsen and Johnson 2016). This, in turn, has been demonstrated to be partly affected by shortcomings in energy management including insufficient practices and technologies related to energy performance monitoring (Armstrong and Banks 2015;.…”

“…Many still collect data on energy consumption manually, with the standard practice being that chief officers in navigation or engine departments send in consumption reports to the shore organization once a day but rarely get any feedback from shore. This has been reported to lead to a lack of transparency, data misreporting and lack of trust and support of energy consumption-monitoring policies, resulting in insufficient awareness and engagement on part of the crews (Poulsen and Johnson 2016;Poulsen and Sornn-Friese 2015). Moreover, the lack of auto-logging systems, collection of real-time data, and the non-use of computer applications, allowing statistical analysis of energy consumption and other relevant parameters, "prevents decision makers at sea and onshore from making adequate and prompt changes in ship operations to save fuel" (Poulsen and Johnson 2016, p. 3792).…”