CE Delft Defends Its Shipping Efficiency Study

Responding to conflicting claims about the conclusions the study it prepared for Seas At Risk and Transport & Environment on shipping’s efficiency in the press and most recently the criticism of the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), consultancy firm CE Delft stood firm behind its findings.

“CE Delft’s study for Seas At Risk and T&E found that ships can improve their design efficiency by about 5-15% on average just by going back to 1990 designs alone. As CE Delft has reiterated, its findings are based on the data and EIV/EEDI formulae which the IMO itself used. The ICS now needs to take the results seriously and show us why the EEDI targets shouldn’t be reviewed,” said John Maggs, policy advisor at Seas At Risk and president of the Clean Shipping Coalition.

“The EIV formula is a simplified form of the Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) that was used by the IMO to calculate the EEDI reference lines (which were set as the best fit average lines of all EIVs in the period 1999-2009). It can therefore be considered as a simple yet accepted measure of design efficiency. We have calculated EIVs on the basis of IHS and Clarkson databases, as did the IMO,” the consultancy explained.

Furthermore, the consultancy added that the study shows that the EIV of new ships was on average worse than the EEDI reference line for ships built in the 1960s and 1970s, improved considerably in the 1980s and then deteriorated again.

“This means that, on average, a ship built around 2010 had a design efficiency (as represented by the EIV) that was worse than a similar ship (same ship type, same size) built around 1990.  One of the main reasons why modern ships have a design efficiency that is worse than ships built around 1990 is that modern ships are, on average, fuller (more block-like). The reason for this is that when freight rates are high, it makes sense to build full ships because within draft and length constraints, they can transport more cargo than a more slender ship,” the statement reads.

As explained, the EIV formula as established by the IMO does not take into account improvements in fuel efficiency of engines.  However, if it were taken into account the deterioration in design efficiency since 1990 would likely have been less than the study reported, CE Delfit said.

Furthermore, the consultancy said that its methodology compared similar ships, not  how the fleet average design efficiency has evolved, stressing that its  conclusions relate to design efficiency not operational fuel efficiency.