New emission monitoring partnership to ‘bolster’ South Korea’s maritime decarbonization drive

August 25, 2025, by Sara Kosmajac

The Korea Ocean Business Corporation (KOBC) has joined forces with compatriot greenhouse gas (GHG) emission monitoring service providers Mapsea Corporation and Ecomarine to support domestic shipping companies in complying with environmental regulations.

The agreement, announced on August 21, reportedly encompasses voucher-based access to greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring services. The development expands KOBC’s “Marine Environmental Regulation Response Voucher Program”, which the organization has been promoting since last year.

As disclosed by Mapsea Corporation, this partnership is anticipated to play an ‘important’ part in South Korea’s maritime decarbonization efforts by helping shipowners and managers meet their sustainability targets, especially amid increasingly stringent environmental standards, such as those mandated by the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

It is understood that the maritime transport players benefiting from the vouchers can receive support in various areas necessary for ecological compliance. This is said to include fuel consumption analysis, carbon dioxide (CO2) emission data management, as well as solutions aimed at improvement within these spheres.

As informed, at present, a total of 22 vessels are already receiving voucher support, which allows for access to greenhouse gas regulation response services. Should the number of service providers increase, KOBC allegedly plans to expand the scope further and offer monitoring support—in conjunction with its financial assistance programs—for shipping companies.

What is more, the latest agreement is said to have expanded KOBC’s pool of partners from the existing four players to six.

The monitoring of GHG emissions in shipping is one of the ‘core’ pillars of the industry’s decarbonization strategy. Without ‘robust’ monitoring, it is believed that shipowners may not be able to demonstrate compliance fully and thus risk penalties, which could comprise being excluded from certain trade routes.

Monitoring emissions is estimated to, therefore, help operators identify inefficiencies in speed, routing or engine performance, with small improvements projected to save possibly thousands of tons of fuel per year.

In addition to this, as understood, emission monitoring could also support the adoption of alternative fuels (liquefied natural gas, methanol, ammonia, biofuels) by comparing real-world performance and lifecycle emissions.

A growing number of companies have shown interest in monitoring tools. In South Korea, for example, shipbuilding major Hanwha Ocean engineered a smart ship technology that monitors a vessel’s carbon intensity index (CII), as reported in February 2024.

According to Hanwha Ocean, the solution assesses how much carbon dioxide a ship produces while it is operating and uses this information to calculate its annual operational CII.

What is more, in February 2025, Cyprus-headquartered SmartSea and the UAE-based Digital Energy AI teamed up to examine the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in the marine and offshore energy sectors.

Per the partners’, the endeavor would seek to integrate, explore and test AI-driven analytics, ‘real-time’ monitoring and predictive maintenance.

As a result, SmartSea and Digital Energy AI hope to craft a set of solutions that would optimize their vessels’ fuel consumption and lower harmful pollutant emissions while staying in line with global environmental regulations.

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