Ferry industry ‘needs special treatment’
Regulators are very willing to listen but they need facts and figures, not sentiment, says Johan Roos of Interferry.
“Regulators are very willing to listen but they need facts and figures, not sentiment, which is something our industry needs to work harder on,” said Johan Roos, Interferry’s executive director of EU and IMO affairs.
This comment follows the ferry industry’s collective sigh of relief at a two year extension allowed it to find a workable Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) formula that does not penalise the special requirements of ferries.
The EEDI, says the IMO, is the product of a broad church united around a single objective, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from ships. However, some say it is simply too broad, and ferries, for example, will suffer.
Deltamarin concept design manager Esa Jokioinen reported on work to find a ferry-friendly EEDI formula within two years of it becoming mandatory for other vessels in January 2013. Studies for the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) had shown that the current formula produced up to 300% scatter in ferry index values depending on their speed and capacity.
“The EEDI represents a power limit which is in effect a speed limit, he explained. “It might be OK for some ships to reduce engine power and slow down, but how would this work for ferries taking into account schedules, redundancy and safety margins?”
He added that ferries needed a formula that recognised their speed dependency and defined capacity on measures like deadweight tonnage and lane metres rather than the “possibly misleading” gross tonnage calculation.
Roy Beswick, fleet director of Morocco’s Comarit, said that operators felt threatened by the wave of regulatory proposals. “I’m not against regulations on green and sustainable ships but we need to go at a more reasonable pace”, he argued. “The EEDI definition is a typesetter’s nightmare, it has to be one of the most complex formulas ever seriously proposed to be a part of legislation.”
Mr Roos had the last word, “Lack of knowledge is the real enemy, not the ambitions of regulators.”
EMSA is to host a workshop on EEDI proposals in December.
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