Op-Ed: EEXI and CII—despite their flaws, this year’s milestones represent a step in the right direction 

Written by Heather Ervin
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Credit: Shutterstock/MIS Marine

New year, new rules. MIS Marine’s Managing Director Dominic McKnight Hardy shares his insight on the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) regulations concerning energy efficiency and carbon intensity from a Marine Assurance perspective.  

Updates to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) Annex VI will require ships to reduce their GHG emissions from the start of this year, adding weight behind shipping’s environmental regulatory framework by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) as the industry strives to become more sustainable and compliant with the wider climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement. 

Already well-documented and discussed, the newly in-force EEXI and CII regulations are notable in terms of what they represent for shipping. While they are by no means ‘silver bullets’ for the industry, they are clear signals that the shipping industry will become more regulated in the coming years, and that decarbonization is now essential for every stakeholder. These measures should therefore be viewed as a steppingstone to more stringent rules in the coming years, looking beyond what they entail specifically and taking into account shipping’s bigger picture.

The volume of data that these two initiatives alone will generate presents huge opportunities for benchmarking and analysis to help provide more transparency and insight into the global fleet as well as the maritime industry’s decarbonization journey.

When it comes to estimations for these regulations, numbers in isolation without context and industry data will prove unhelpful. The strongest approach is to calculate data from across the industry and benchmark a vessel against the whole fleet, using AIS traffic to work out routes and speed, for example, as well as to calculate the approximate CII for efficiency performance. This is where Marine Assurance comes to the fore. 

Marine Assurance is helping to drive greater awareness of the action that shipping must now take as part of the global response to climate issues. This is increasingly the case when it comes to environmental incidents and their operational and reputational impacts.

Shipping and energy companies must harness innovative data to create a useful and insightful risk portfolio, which will support them in taking proactive measures, establishing their own objectives for emissions reduction contributing to the development of a greener industry, while safeguarding operational and reputational standards. 

Just as it is helpful to take a helicopter perspective and view the IMO’s latest initiatives as a steppingstone towards achieving these environmental goals, Marine Assurance must also be utilized as a key tool towards improved standards and transparency across the shipping industry. Allowing us to build a better understanding of a vessel’s entire risk portfolio, Marine Assurance supports the way we now approach environmental, safety and geopolitical matters, aiding performance across complex regulatory matters.

Through combining artificial intelligence and human insight to produce a complete package of necessary information, businesses are now supported in making more informed decisions around their sustainability goals. 

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