The Danish government has set very ambitious binding targets regarding decarbonization. By 2030, carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced by 70% compared to the 1990 level. This can be achieved primarily through a predominantly renewables-based electricity system and the electrification of energy demand.
Over the recent decades, there has been an increasing focus on energy-efficient operation of vessels. It has become part of the political agenda, where regulation is the main driver, but the maritime industry itself has also been driven towards more energy-efficient operation of the vessels, due to increasing fuel costs. Improving the energy efficiency on board vessels is not only a technical issue - factors such as awareness of the problem, knowledge skills and motivation are also important parameters that must be considered.
The paper shows how training in energy-efficient operation and awareness can affect the energy consumption of vessels. The study is based on navigational, full-mission simulator tests conducted at the International Maritime Academy SIMAC. A full-mission simulator is an image of the world allowing the students to obtain skills through learning-by-doing in a safe environment. Human factors and technical issues were included and the test sessions consisted of a combination of practical simulator exercises and reflection workshops.
The result of the simulator tests showed that a combination of installing technical equipment and raising awareness - making room for reflections-on and in-action - has a positive effect on energy consumption. The participants, on average, saved approximately 10% in fuel.
Collaborative spatial decision support tools can contribute with setups for including stakeholders into marine spatial planning (MSP) processes with the purpose of increasing trust in planning outcomes, facilitate knowledge co-creation and shared planning goals, and provide transparent, scientific, inclusive, and technical foundations for planning. A new collaborative spatial decision support setup based on the combination of functionalities from two spatial decision support tools called SEANERGY and Baltic Explorer was designed for and tested in a workshop in 2020 targeted local authorities, NGOs, and citizens in Denmark with an interest in MSP. While the setup needs further testing among a wider span of stakeholders to support a pluralistic approach, the findings illustrate promising potentials from ranking conflicts and synergies in collaborative settings to make marine activity interests spatially visible in MSP and gain an overview of opportunities for sea use multi-functionality in context-based, interactive, goal-oriented stakeholder processes. The use of a visual platform such as Baltic Explorer to systematically explore locations of marine uses was positively evaluated to facilitate the workshop conflict-synergy discussions. Challenges relate to how to deal with disagreements on conflict-synergy scores and the subjectivity of opinions, but the demonstrated flexible, quick, transparent way to test the sensitivity of spatial patterns to differences in input conflict-synergy scores is found to provide a promising setup for including stakeholder opinions through collaborative settings, a setup adjustable to supplementary large-scale, individual, more representative surveys as well.
Port clusters are expected to play a significant role in the transition towards a circular economy, both at the level of facilitating regional and global transport within circular production chains, as well as hosting circular activities in port areas. There is strong evidence that significant investments in the circular economy (CE) are being made in port areas, albeit without much knowledge on their impacts. To ensure an efficient use of port resources in view of this transition, these impacts should be adequately monitored. Research on circular economy indicators for ports is still in an exploratory stage, characterized by an absence of in-depth research on the development of port-related circular economy indicators. This paper focuses on the development of a comprehensive set of relevant and feasible CE indicators, which aim to support port managing bodies (PMBs) as well as port stakeholders to monitor the CE transition taking place. Through multimethod qualitative research, including content analysis, focus groups, a gap analysis and a qualitative survey, an actionable list of CE 12 indicators for ports was developed. Seven of which are highly feasible and five of which have medium feasibility in terms of stakeholder relevance and ease of implementation. Findings related to (1) the overall limited CE ambition levels of PMBs and (2) the difference in the values of some indicators for different port typologies are also discussed. The value of this study for practitioners lies in providing them with an actionable set of KPIs which can support their efforts and communication related to their CE transition.
Maritime shipping is regarded as the most efficient mode of transport; however, its contribution to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions and the health issues related to shipping activity near residential centers cannot be neglected. In recent years, the efforts of regulators, ship operators, and port authorities have led to actions for ship emissions reduction to improve shipping's environmental performance. This work builds on an activity-based methodology that allows the estimation of emissions and examines environmental effects of slow steaming, fuel regulations, near-port speed-reduction schemes, and cold ironing. Pollutant emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and black carbon are modeled. A linear programming model minimizes fuel consumption through speed differentiation on a shipping line's routes based on fuel costs and binding regulations in each segment of the journey. Although the examined emissions-reduction actions may have a positive regional environmental effect by cutting emissions, it is possible that additional emissions are generated elsewhere because of increased sailing speeds beyond regulated areas. Trade-offs between pollutants are observed for reduction actions that may have a positive effect on some emission species but at the same time result in additional particulate matter and black carbon emissions. The presented framework allows key actors to conduct comprehensive studies and design improved emissions reduction actions with fewer negative impacts in other areas.
Ports are crucial hubs in the functioning of the global economy, and maritime transport is a major emitter of air pollutants. Ports have considerable potential for promoting environmental upgrading in maritime transport and along global value chains more generally, but so far have been only partially successful in doing so. We examine results, limitations and future potential of voluntary initiatives that have been carried out by selected European and North American port authorities, which are considered frontrunners in environmental management. Drawing from the insights of global value chain analysis and organizational theory, we find that low ‘tool implementation complexity’ and high ‘issue visibility’ concerning emissions are key facilitators of environmental upgrading. We suggest that ports can intervene in two main ways to improve the environmental performance of maritime transport beyond their organizational and physical boundaries: by lowering tool implementation complexity through stronger collaboration within global value chains; and by enhancing emission visibility through alliances with cargo-owners and regulators.
When a ship navigates at sea, the slamming impact can generate significant load pulses which move up along the hull plating. The effect of the moving pressure has so far not been explicitly considered in the Rules and Regulations for the Classification of Ships. Based on a modal superposition method and the Lagrange equation, this paper derives analytical solutions to study the elastic dynamic responses of fully clamped rectangular plates under moving pressure impact loads. The spatial variation of the moving slamming impact pressure is simplified to three types of impact loads, i.e. a rectangular pulse, a linearly decaying pulse and an exponentially decaying pulse. The dynamic responses of fully clamped rectangular plates under the moving slamming impact pressure are calculated in order to investigate the influence of the load pulse shapes and moving speed on the plate structural behaviour. It is found that the structural response of the plate increases with the increase of the moving speed. The response of the plate subjected to a moving pressure impact load is smaller than the case when the plate is subjected to a spatially uniform distributed impact load with the same load amplitude and load duration. In order to quantify the effect of the moving speed on the dynamic load, a Dynamic Moving Load Coefficient (DMLC) is introduced as the ratio between the dynamic load factor for the moving impact load and that under the spatially uniform distributed impact load. An expression for DMLC is proposed based on analyses of various scenarios using the developed analytical model. Finally an empirical formula which transforms the moving impact loads to an equivalent static load is proposed.
Although the concept of ecosystem services has been in use for many decades, its application for policy support is limited, particularly with respect to marine ecosystems. Gaps in the assessments of ecosystem services supply prevent its empirical application. We advance these assessments by providing an assessment tool, which links marine ecosystem components, functions and services, and graphically represents the assessment process and its results. The tool consists of two parts: (i) a matrix following the ecosystem services cascade structure for quantifying the contribution of ecosystem components in the provision of ecosystem services; (ii) and a linkage diagram for visualizing the interactions between the elements. With the aid of the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES), the tool was used to assess the relative contribution of a wide range of marine ecosystem components in the supply of ecosystem services in the Latvian marine waters. Results indicate that the tool can be used to assess the impacts of environmental degradation in terms of ecosystem service supply. These impacts could further be valued in socioeconomic terms, as changes in the socioeconomic values derived from the use of ecosystem services. The tool provides an opportunity for conducting a holistic assessment of the ecosystem service supply and communicating the results to marine spatial planning practitioners, and increasing their understanding and use of the ecosystem service concept.
Optimisation of energy efficiency and operational performance as well as assessment of safety levels and emissions of marine operations require detailed information about the acting wave system. It is possible-with an analogy to classical wave buoys-to estimate the directional wave spectrum by processing sensor measurements of wave-induced responses (e.g., motions and structural responses) from a ship. Compared to other sources of wave data (e.g., buoys, satellites, third-generation wave models), estimation concepts using the ship itself as a buoy provide the wave spectrum at the exact spatio-temporal point, potentially increasing accuracy and with minimal associated cost. This paper gives an overview of the technology, discusses associated uncertainties, and highlights new developments made for estimating waves via measured ship responses.
This paper presents a new approach for estimating encountered wave elevation sequences by use of measured ship responses, where wind-waves and swell may come from different directions, i.e. bi-directional waves. The main assumption of the approach, making use of Prolate Spheroidal Wave Functions (PSWF), is that the wave field is represented by multi-directional irregular waves. Thus, combining available measured responses, the phases and amplitudes of the multi-directional irregular waves are derived as the solution, by which the wave profiles can be estimated. Numerical investigations using artificially generated response measurements (sway, heave, pitch, vertical bending moment) of a bulk carrier in uni-directional and bi-directional long-crested as well as short-crested sea states are made. It is shown that the present approach can accurately estimate wave elevation sequences in such sea states.